Blog like no one is reading

Winter Wordless Wednesday

2012-01-31T21:42:00.006-05:00

Random Tuesday Ramblings

2012-01-24T11:54:00.004-05:00

I think Mother Nature is going through menopause with hot flashes due to global warming. It's the only explanation for the roller coaster ride we've been on this winter - snow, rain, snow, rain, wash, rinse, repeat.

I survived (barely) being a single parent for 10 days. I won't get into the gory details but sufficed to say it was a bit like Groundhog Day from the same time last year. Three kids throwing up, ski races and hockey games all over and finished off with me lying on the bathroom floor wishing I was anywhere else but there.

Trying to love the Twitterverse but thinking it really is just the ultimate time-sucking blackhole. Until they come up with a newer time-sucking technological black hole, of course.

Only 11 more sleeps until I escape to here and then I'm off to Florida to be a bikini-less boat babe at the Miami Boat Show. We'll definitely sell more if I keep my clothes on.

The wacky weather and flu epidemic hasn't done much to help me stick to my promise to ride every Tuesday, so far I've gone once.

Watched Contangion while I was sick as I am not only a end-of-the-world sort of gal but also a masochist. It actually wasn't that scary, more of a docudrama than thriller.

Missed the first episode of Season Two of Downton Abbey after my Season One marathon on the weekend but have now programmed the PVR so I don't miss it again. Can't believe Thomas is now in charge of the house.

Still waiting to hear if I will get into the Erma Bombeck Writer's Workshop on the waiting list. I also entered the contest held by the University of Dayton and the Public Library with this post in hopes of winning a spot at the workshop. Wish me luck.

Now I have to get up and out of here to go and subject myself to mindless government bureaucracy to finally get Sons Numbers Two & Three their SIN Cards which for you non-Canadians isn't what it sounds like. SIN stands for Social Insurance Number and the fact that they don't yet have them is completely due to my lack of interest in dealing with it for the last 11 years. And while I'm subjecting myself to this torture I might as well renew No. 3's passport which conveniently is on a completely different expiry rotation from mine and his brothers. Oh well, speaking of black holes, maybe I can catch up on my Twittering ;-)

Totally Wordless Wednesday

2012-01-18T15:22:00.002-05:00

'cause there are no words to describe this

I'm Going Old School

2012-01-16T19:37:00.000-05:00

With the three boys' ski, hockey and school schedules plus boat shows and work I now have a calendar on the fridge, one hanging on the wall, one on my laptop and one on my phone and even though I sync and cross-reference them regularly I still can't keep all the practices, races, projects and training straight so when a seemingly unflappable mother of three pulled out this on the weekend I knew where I'm headed in 2012 - old school. Back to pen and paper. It isn't just that I have always loved paper and notebooks but having gone to school in the pre-computer age I remember things so much better when I write them down. Of course I still have my Kate Spade leopard print Filofax but I don't need the address list which is sadly out of date anymore so I think I'll keep it simple with just the planner. Now I'm ticking off the days on all my calendars until it arrives (along with Season One of Downton Abbey!)

Spa Dreaming and Planning

2012-01-12T05:59:00.000-05:00

I can't quite believe it but in less than a month I am going to be relaxing at this beautiful place.

My dear friend Jessica is given the best gift by her husband every few years - a weekend at Ste Anne's Spa with a friend. I was lucky enough to be that friend four years ago and I have an invitation again this year! Ste Anne's is the warmest, coziest place you can imagine where everyone wanders around in their robes even for meals.

It isn't pretentious like some city spas, it feels like visiting a wonderful country estate run by an eccentric aunt who serves high tea every afternoon which you can enjoy in your robe and slippers. I could never afford to go for a weekend on my own so I feel very fortunate that Jessica wants to share her gift with me again. Today I went online to take a look at the spa treatments we have to choose from. Last time we went I had a massage and a mud bath which I loved. The feeling of being suspended in mud with no pressure on any body part and not having to tread water was so relaxing. This time I am also going to try the Eucalyptus Body Wrap (what I would do for that right now as I battle this head cold) and also the Botantical Resurfacing Facial. We'll also take a Yoga class and hopefully do some snowshoeing if we winter ever arrives properly. And, of course, we'll spend lots of time catching each other up on life with the men in our lives (she has two sons and a male miniature Schnauzer) Jessica and I share a love of the sublime to the ridiculous (we both admit to watching both Gene Simmons Family Jewels and Downton Abbey) During our last visit we spent quite a bit of time discussing who we would want to be with us in the post-Apocalyptic world. This time we're thinking that maybe the theme will be post-Apocalyptic recipes.

So the countdown has begun - 23 sleeps until we go! In the mean time hockey playoffs have begun for Number One Son, ski racing season is in full swing with all three boys skiing at least three days a week, usually at three different clubs. And, of course, boat show season kicks off in Toronto this Friday for ten days, to be followed by Boston and Miami. Time to take a deep breath and maybe plan a getaway with my Other Half to celebrate his birthday at the end of the month.

Wordless Wednesday

2012-01-11T09:19:00.002-05:00

Two wonderful videos about two of my favourite things. Enjoy!

Books of 2011

2011-12-28T11:19:00.035-05:00

Okay, this is by no means a complete list but I thought it would be fun to try to list them by those read digitally on my Kobo and those in actual book form. More an exercise for myself as anyone else. My bookshelves are less crowded but I'm definitely not spending any less money (when will libraries get the rights to lend ebooks?) I was speaking to our local bookseller before Christmas and was not only she being hurt by the lack of snow (no tourists or skiers coming in to browse or buy) but because of ebooks she said that now, instead of ordering two or three of the bestsellers in hardcover she was only stocking one. I am as much to blame as the next bookworm. It is just way too easy to sit at home or anywhere else with wifi and download a book and especially the ones I read like some people go through a bag of chips in one sitting (see The Fever Series) and a few others I will only admit to here but I did buy my most favourite book of 2011 in hardback from her (see this post). The other downside is that you can't lend them to your friends but you can read my reviews for some of these on my GoodReads page which is linked to on the right under "I Just Finished"

Read in Book Form

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Best Laid Plans and The High Road by Terry Fallis

Planting Dandelions by Kyran Pittman

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Mistress of Nothing by Kate Pullinger

The Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Read on Kobo

Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

Annabel by Kathleen Winter

Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Arranged by Catherine McKenzie

Bride of New France by Suzanne Desrochers

Still Life and Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny

Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis

A Whole Bunch of Very Funny Books by Jen Lancaster

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

Miss New India by Bharati Mukherjee

Another Bunch of Books by Elin Hilderbrandt

Confessions of A Bad Mother by Stephanie Calman

The Evolution of Jane by Cathleen Schine

Books I Started but Could Not Finish (digitally or otherwise)

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

Illusions by Richard Bach

The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain (One of the 100 or so that came pre-loaded which I haven't read)

Wow, that's a rather telling list isn't it? There are a few more that obviously aren't memorable enough for me to, well, remember. Seven real books versus over fifteen ebooks. Hmmm ... guess my dream of opening a bookstore one day isn't meant to be.

2011-12-28T11:11:00.003-05:00

Funniest book ever from my funniest (and only) sister!

Check out it out here.

Little Drummer Boy

2011-12-21T09:31:00.002-05:00

This has always been one of my least favourite Christmas songs but I love this young man from Winnipeg's very Canadian version.

“People have been asking... so, yes, I played all the parts, sang, arranged and recorded the whole thing. I had my sister run the camera for specific shots, then I edited the video and posted it here!”

~ Sean Quigley

I hope you all have a very happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year

Words to live by

2011-12-15T06:49:00.003-05:00

After stumbling across this I decided I have to sign up for the Erma Bombeck Writer's Workshop next spring. Started filling out the application two days ago but didn't finish and all the spots were filled yesterday. I have to be willing to take more risks and think less about doing it. I'll try to get in on the wait list.

Christmas Construction and Creation

2011-12-09T08:55:00.006-05:00

Every year the kids and my Other Half build a Gingerbread House from a package but this year Number One Son found a recipe and instructions to build a Ski Chalet and so we decided to give it a try.

Step One - Baking

Step Two - Assembly

Step Three - Decoration

More blanket pillows

Santa's Little Helpers at the Parade

Barefoot in the Snow

2011-12-06T11:49:00.005-05:00

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

- Albert Camus

And, once again, I lost it

2011-12-02T10:45:00.003-05:00

Last night as I was lying beside Number Two son before he went to sleep he dropped a bomb. This is his MO every night. He desperately wants me to "sleep with him" and when the boys were little this was my favourite time of day, I would lie next to them in their beds and fall into that wonderful half wake/half asleep place where you are warm and cozy and relaxed. The downside was that sometimes I would really fall asleep and then have to wake myself up to go get into my own bed where I would then be wide awake for the next hour or so but still it was nice. Now? it's a nightmare of demands from all three boys but Number Two has raised it to an art form. There are three kids (what were we thinking?) and only two parents. Numbers One and Two generally get into bed around the same time but I usually start by lying with Number One Son because he is younger, is ready first and calms down more easily than his middle brother. This is a sticking point, of course because although No. 2 doesn't like going to bed at the same time as his little brother he also doesn't me lying with him first. Problem with the logistics? Yes but, of course, he wants his cake and be able to sleep with it too.

So back to last night, my Other Half lay with No. 3 while I went into No. 2's room steeling myself for whatever issues might come up this time. It started out fine until he said, "I don't want to go to Vermont." Now he and I are going skiing with his team for a week, something he has been looking forward to for months. He counts the days off on the calendar and he has already started packing. Where the hell did this come from?

I took a deep breath and asked, "Why?"

"I just don't want to go now," he replied. Sticking his face into the pillow to hide.

Again, breathing deeply, I asked, "Why?"

Nothing. Now I was getting mad. He has been bugging us about ski trips and camps and everything else under the sun. His Christmas list reads like Best Buy catalogue and he has demanded everything under the sun from guitar lessons to workout classes which he does for a while and then gives up. I couldn't believe he was now saying he didn't want to miss school for a week to go skiing with his friends. He had already complained about the fact that we were driving with another mother and her son and sharing a condo with them to cut down on the expense and we would be making our own meals instead of eating out which had not endeared him to me. YOU ARE GOING TO MISS SCHOOL TO GO SKIING! What else do you want?

So now, ten days before we leave, you don't want to go? Huh? I lost it. Yelled about how ungrateful he is and how we don't have to go or maybe I would take one of his brothers instead. Finally he said, "I don't want to go because we have to play hockey and I don't even know how to skate and everyone is going to laugh at me."

This is when I should have calmed down, been understanding and made him feel better about his legitimate, if slightly ridiculous, concern. But I didn't. Instead I left the room and told his father to go in and explain why playing hockey while on a ski trip was going to be fun and not everyone will know how to play and it certainly isn't a reason not to go. He did all this and No. 2 calmed down somewhat and I did go back in and tried to be sympathetic but in the end I went to bed mad at myself, mad at my son for making me mad and generally feeling like once again I had let everyone down.

It's so hard. Right now it feels like there is no upside to this whole parenting gig and with Christmas around the corner the stakes are even higher. We are supposed to be fostering peace and goodwill towards all men and I can't stand the three junior versions I live with. I should be looking forward to decorating the tree and being together as a family and all I can think about is running away. My Other Half is incredible and he steps in when he knows I am going to lose it but what I need to do is break a really bad pattern that has developed around our house. One of jumping to conclusions, anticipating that someone is going to say something hurtful and generally being a very grumpy mother most of the time.

I should look at this week away with only one boy as a pre-Christmas gift. We will have time together, one-on-one. We are travelling with a fun group and I will have some time on my own while the kids are skiing and I will only be cooking for two not five. My Other Half and Numbers One and Three will have a more laid back time without us in the mix. It may, in fact, be the best thing in a while for all of us.

Getting Crafty

2011-11-29T15:19:00.002-05:00

Two summers ago my mother sold her parents cottage and in the clean out process I came home with a bag of old wool blankets. I said then that I was going to turn them into pillows and now, two and a half years later I have. Hopefully I can post photos of the others that my grandmother wrote her name in black marker across the Hudson's Bay Company label on - twice. They are the perfect gift for my Mum and aunt who never want anything.

Simple Things - The First 25

2011-11-27T17:31:00.003-05:00

I know this has been done many times before and has been and will be done in a much wittier or more creative way by others but it was a quiet day at work so here are my 25 simple things. Wish that I had the time to illustrate them with wonderful photos, maybe I will ... someday.

Sleeping in a freshly made bed
Opening the first page of a book I couldn't wait to read
The first snowfall of the season
Listening to my children laugh or sing together
Laughing with my brother and sister
Paddling through the morning mist on our lake
Sitting on the dock with coffee, the paper and a warm sticky bun
The smell of a wood fire burning on a cold night
An unexpected message from a friend
The smell and touch of a just bathed baby
Galloping across a wide open field
Peonies, daisies and lilacs
Hearing the perfect song at the perfect time
The quiet of sounds muffled at night by a blanket of snow
The smell of freshly baked bread
Looking at their baby pictures with my boys
Being alone at the cottage
Being with friends and family at the cottage
Plain white china
Fall colours, cozy sweaters and leather boots
The smell of the barn - horses, leather and hay
Afternoon naps on the porch in the summer
Afternoon naps under a cozy duvet during the winter
Seeing an elderly couple holding hands
Hearing silence and discovering that everyone is reading

What are the simple things you love?

Where, oh where is it?

2011-11-24T11:35:00.005-05:00

Look Ma! My hand

2011-11-22T17:45:00.008-05:00

My lifelong dream to become a model was fulfilled this past August when my SIL, a very talented photographer (you can see her work here) asked me to model for Suetables. You can buy any or all of these wonderful bracelets here.

Is this too big for a Stocking Stuffer?

2011-11-17T15:08:00.003-05:00

It's a coffee mug

If ever I loved a book by its cover, this is it

2011-11-16T17:40:00.004-05:00

I didn't wait for the paperback edition or buy it for my Kobo and I haven't even started reading it yet but I just know.

Monday Musings

2011-11-13T16:32:00.009-05:00

Had a fun night out on Friday to celebrate a friend's birthday on 11-11-11. First there was a delicious dinner catered by Azzura (I will have to try to recreate the maple-glazed gnoochi) then we went out in search of a place to dance which up here in November isn't easy. We did make it to the pub where seven lovely women of a certain - shall we say middle - age were all told by the scruffy looking bouncer at the door that if at least one of us didn't have ID none of us were going in. Really? Of course not one of us had even brought a purse and carried nothing other than a credit card since we had very responsibly cabbed it over. We all looked at the barely post-adolescent man-child at the door and said, "Seriously?" It's November, shoulder season for the restaurants and bars in our resort area, the pub was empty and we were seven, count 'em, seven credit card-carrying women on a Girls Night Out. Finally he relented and said he's let us in that night but if we came back again we'd better have ID. It wasn't even flattering, just annoying and silly.

The place was quiet but by 11pm it started to fill up with people who should be asked for ID and the band was good. They got us up and dancing with some Stones covers and then jammed the floor with lots of great eighties tunes. But by midnight I was fading, only downside of cabbing over was that I either had to wait for the others to call it a night or pay for a cab by myself to get home. I began to pretend to drink my beer as the others kept downing theirs and I stayed out on the dance floor to make sure that I wasn't going to be too hungover in the morning. Most of the others were staying over at the birthday girl's place but I was going home and mornings still come bright (at least since the time change last weekend) and early with my kids. The strategy worked and we even scored a ride home with a friend so not only did the evening cost me next to nothing I really did feel fine the next day and I had a lot of fun. So (note to self) always dance at least 20 minutes for every drink consumed that way you burn off the calories and pre-empt the hangover. And that, I will point out the next time I'm asked for ID, is something you only learn with age.

A phone conversation with my mother gave me a bit of a pause when she asked how I was and I replied that I was a little blah but probably just pre-menstrual. She said, "Oh, you haven't started menopause then?" No, I hope I haven't. Of course, that isn't a conversation we have had at all and I guess, kind of like the one we had when I was 13, it should come sooner rather than later. So, instead of pursuing it with her, I went on-line and found this book to read instead. I'll let you know if it helps explain the blahs.

Another recent Amazon.ca purchase has been a real hit around our house. I am now an Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day convert. The only problem is that while it really doesn't take long to make - it takes even less time to eat! This afternoon I am going to show Number One Son (the big eater) how to make his own bread, but first I have to go and buy the 10 kilo bag of flour. I will post some fresh-baked pictures soon.

Number One Son made it home safely from Colorado and had an incredible time. As a friend of mine said, "Don't you wish you were your own kid?" Yup, skiing for ten days with friends, stalking Lindsey Vonn on and off the slopes, snowball fights in the hot tub, that's the life I want.

Still trying to figure out Twitter but really can't justify the time. I have a couple of friends and bloggers whom I follow but I just don't get the whole #hashtag thingy. And really, unless you're some famous person who has fans hanging on your every move then who needs to know what you are doing minute-by-minute in 142 characters. Or is is words?

Empty Fridge Syndrome

2011-11-08T09:52:00.006-05:00

Kyran over at Planting Dandelions has written a very timely post for me. In it she talks about trying to set priorities in her home, family, work and the outside world. As a SAHM who works two days a week I find it very hard to prioritize these days. Especially since the number one thing at the top of my To Do List every day is grocery shop. As some of you may know I have three boys and while only the eldest has entered teendom recently he is already eating us out of the proverbial house and home. My days are spent worrying about what to feed him as he is an athlete in training and very concerned about the quality of the fuel he puts in his body - no junk food or other fast fill-me-ups, he expects meat or fish, vegetables and all in vast quantities. I buy carrots and potatoes in ten pound bags, pasta is the over-sized no name brand, multiple bags of milk (it is sold packaged in three one litre bags here in Ontario) and I have started to look more closely at the half-off meat section (I know, but I figure if it's good until two days later than I can freeze it right away and it will keep)

And this is only with one eating like a teenage boy. Because my Other Half and I were so regular in the reproductive cycle, our boys are exactly each two years apart from one another which mean when Number Three is 13, his brothers are 15 and 17 and all will still be at home. The eldest won't be off to university until he's 18 which means I have at minimum two years when I will be feeding them all and if any of them decide to apply a fabulous programme they offer at our high school which I sincerely hope they do, they could be home for a fifth year of high school.

Now math was never my strong suit but here is my attempt at the calculations (Beth, you can let me know if I am being overly optimistic)

3 boys - ages 13 to 18

5 years x 3 boys = 15 years of teenage boy appetites

I can't even begin to calculate the sheer volume of milk drunk, bread toasted, cereal bowls filled, steaks consumed, carrots and potatoes peeled. It staggers the mind.

So, as for the list of priorities?

Re-join Costco
Make friends with an egg and beef farmer
Invest in a new bread machine
Encourage the boys to go fishing after school (the salmon are running as I type in the river right at our doorstep)
Teach them all to make scrambled eggs, spaghetti and grilled cheese to start

I have often said that I don't want to be the mother-in-law who my daughters-in-law hate so now is as good a time as any to start them in the kitchen, Number One Son has already mastered the BBQ and is learning to follow a recipe. Next stop? The laundry room. After all, it's all about priorities, right?

Monday, Monday. Can't trust that day

2011-11-07T12:07:00.006-05:00

I have been on hold with Air Canada for the last 20 minutes trying to figure out why my son was charged $150 for his three bags while his friend who checked in at the next desk was charged $50 for the exact same number of bags with identical contents.

I had to drag Number Two Son out of bed this morning and force him to pack his things for a three day class trip to the Outdoor Education Centre. This is the kid who has gone to camp for a month for the past three summers but for some reason he didn't want to go even though the weather forecast is great and his older brother had a ball when he went in Grade 6.

My Other Half and I had a little couple time this weekend when my Dad took the two boys for Saturday night. We went all out, as old married couples do and rented a movie, got sushi and sat in front of the fire. Went to bed early and enjoyed the extra hour of sleeping in. And when we went to pick up the boys around 10am we found they had gone off on a adventure with their grandfather which consisted of driving down the highway looking for cool cars and ending up at the Bass Pro Outlet where they bought a giant stuffed fish. We went home and planted some bulbs, put away the boats, put compost on the vegetable garden and had lunch outside on a patio. Bliss for a few extra hours.

No riding this week as deer hunting season has started. Despite the gorgeous warm weather it's definitely not worth the risk of getting shot at by some yahoo who can't tell the difference between a rider on a horse and a white tail deer.

Numer One Son has called every evening and seems to be doing well despite some drama amongst his roomates. Apparently one of the boys has never been away from home and can't sleep so his solution is too keep everyone else up. His mother's solution is to move my son so her's can room with another boy. My solution? Don't send your son on a trip like this if he isn't ready to go.

I have now been on hold for 35 minutes.

And he's off

2011-11-04T06:03:00.013-04:00

Number One Son and his Dad in Colorado - age 6

I'm up at an ungodly hour because my Other Half and Number One Son left an hour ago to head to the airport. He is off on his first solo trip with his ski team to Colorado for ten days. Of course after saying goodbye - twice - I couldn't get back to sleep but luckily neither of the other boys have woken up yet. I am so excited for him but unbelievably nervous. Nervous about the airport, they have 15 kids travelling with three coaches and travelling nowadays is so much more complicated than when I took my first trip alone. Then, of course, there's the worry about the fact that they are going to train for ski racing and will be spending all day, every day careening down the mountain at crazy speeds. He has a North American plan on his phone so he can call and text us when ever he wants which won't be often enough for me but at least I can remind him to brush his teeth via text. He didn't take my advice to pack a pair of underwear and his toilet kit in his carry-on bag since for him the only priority is that the airline doesn't lose his ski or boot bag. Clean underwear be damned.

Back when I took my first solo trip to visit a friend in Colorado for Spring Break things were very different. I think we arrived at the airport less than an hour before the flight and my Dad might have even been allowed to come to the gate with me. Today they will be checking in two hours in advance in the hopes that they all make it through customs and security in time to board the plane. We had to make sure he has enough cash to pay all the baggage fees at check in on the way home even though the surcharges added to the cost of the ticket were already well over $100. But Number One is a seasoned traveller, he knows how to stand in line, remove his shoes at security and hopefully they will have a few luggage carts to carry all the skis since manoeuvring three bags through the customs maze will be tricky.

Carry on bag circa 1980 (14 year old girl)

Seventeen magazine
paperback copy of latest Judith Krantz novel
toilet and make up kit with lots of hair scrunchies
Le Sport Sac bag to hold everything
laminated birth certificate
American cash to shop at the GAP (which hadn't yet come to Canada)
reminder to buy film, take pictures and send post cards to my grandparents

Carry on bag 2011 (13 year old boy)

Archie comic digest
Kobo ereader loaded with sci fi series, iPod, Blackberry with three different chargers
sandwich, granola bars (since the airline only takes credit cards to buy food on board)
Billabong back pack to hold everything
passport, letter of consent to travel alone across the border
debit card to shop for gifts for his brothers ;-)
reminder to take pictures and send them in emails to his grandparents

So I will be spending the day nervously waiting to hear they have arrived safely or at the very least I hope to get a text ;-)

Happy Halloween

2011-10-30T16:41:00.002-04:00

Waiting for Winter

2011-10-24T13:30:00.011-04:00

Wishful thinking (those are ski tracks going down a snow covered mountain)

No, there isn't any snow on the ground up here yet (thank god) and since right now I am waiting for a service call because the furnace conked out after we turned it on for the first time and tomorrow we have to go up north to close the cottage, I really hope there's none in the forecast anytime soon. We got my nephew on skates for the first time and hockey season has started for Number One Son. He is still playing goal and made the rep team where he is the only 13 year old. That is actually a good thing as it means that his teammates are big guys who can protect him from the other big guys. I don't know how he stands there as the puck comes hurtling towards him but he never flinches. We are also preparing him for his first trip with his ski team to Colorado. This is a huge deal and they are leaving in less than two weeks. He will be gone for 10 days and it is the first time he has travelled on his own. So far he seems to be okay with it, very excited and we have talked a lot what to expect, living with roommates and not flipping out if everything doesn't go exactly as planned.

Number Two son and I will be going to Jay Peak in Vermont in December for a week with his team which I hope will be a chance for us to have some one-on-one time since he is having a tough time with the kids in his class again. I really do look forward to ski season starting because they are all so happy skiing and racing every weekend (not to mention more than a few week days) and even if it means only having two days in the entire winter to sleep in (that would be Christmas and New Years Day) it's worth it.

PJ's first time on skates

So the weekend was full of wintery sports as we went down to the city to watch the CBC show Battle of the Blades. Funnily enough my three testosterone filled sons love watching this show which pairs ex-professional hockey players with ex-Olympic pairs figure skaters. Up until this season it has been male hockey players learning to skate with picks and tiny little figure skaters but now there is one female hockey player, Tessa Bonhomme who still plays professionally. It's a little bit cheesy as figure skating often is but it is the one show we all watch together every week.

Waiting for the show to begin

So when my Other Half realized that the producers of the show had bought a boat from us last year and he emailed to see if we could get tickets. We both assumed it was no big deal but it turns out it was. Normally you do have to pay to watch the show but we were not only given the tickets but put in VIP seats right on the ice. Stuck actually on the "island" around which the skaters entered and left the rink. It was very exciting but unfortunately we weren't allowed to take photos during the show. We all had a lot of fun and was our first family night out in a while and although it made for a late night and a slow start this morning I realize we have to make more of an effort to do things like that especially getting my now very much small town boys back into the big city more often. How was your weekend?

Bridesmaids and the Mother of the Boys

2011-10-22T08:18:00.006-04:00

We finally watched Bridesmaids the other night, all of us, the boys included. Trying to find something everyone would like these days is difficult. Number Two loves anything that he thinks we would deem inappropriate, Number One won't watch anything even remotely scary and Number Three doesn't really know what he wants to watch but he knows it can't be for little kids. As for me, I hate blow 'em up, car chase movies. I don't mind a clever thriller a la The Italian Job and my Other Half, let's just say he sat through Something Borrowed for me without complaining.

So we ended up watching Bridesmaids which I thought they'd sit through if only to see the bridal salon/food poisoning scene and I was right. They loved it, Melissa McCarthy in particular. I am hoping most of the innuendo went over their heads and we did have to fast forward through the sex scenes but the thing that really hit home for me wasn't the whole over-the-top wedding, it was the friend who was the mother of three boys who needed a real Bachelorette Party to get away from the animals in her house. That, I could identify with. My house is all male, as I might have mentioned a few times. Even the dog, while neutered, is still a boy and, like most boys, he pees everywhere. My life consists of shopping for, cooking of and cleaning up massive quantitities of food (and only one of the three is officially a teenager) I do laundry every other day and it consists mostly of dingy, mismatched gym socks because they are always left on the floor where the dog finds and enjoys his most favourite snack (don't even ask what they look like when they come out the other end)

But the worst part in the movie is when the MOB talks about how everything in her house is "sticky" I don't even want to contemplate this stage. I remember reading a blog post a while ago (back when my boys were still cute and smelled like bubble bath) about giving teenage boys an endless supply of tube socks. At first I thought, I guess that makes sense, although for some bizarre reason my boys and all their friends only wear tiny little ankle socks, the kind I used to play tennis in, even in the dead of winter when they refuse to wear boots they have a half an inch of bare skin showing between their shoes and pants (they also grow at an alarming rate and I can't keep up with it so half the time their pants are floods) But I digress. Back to the tube socks. Apparently they are great containment vessels.

It took me a while to get it so I'll give you a moment.

Get it? I know. Gross. Really? That's what those long, stretchy socks that come in 12 packs are for? I don't even want to think about it. So while most women enjoyed the story of two best friends learning to appreciate one another, all I could think about was the fact that up until now the worst mess I have had to contend with is the one on the walls and around the base of the toilet. I am so not ready for Stage Two of Teenage Boys.

Oh, go fly a kite!

2011-10-17T15:32:00.008-04:00

After spending two wonderful days with the grown ups in our family at the wedding, we returned home to rescue my mother and aunt from the kids. We arrived at my Mum's place in time to eat turkey leftovers, fly kites and hit a few balls.

Mum, my brother and sister and the boys

What to do when there's no wind

Staying out of harm's way

See the little black thing my brother is holding up? That's his blackberry, he videoed the entire kite-flying expedition including when the dragon kite "attacked" the ATV as they slowed down. It's the little things that amuse us.

An 11 year old boy's idea of heaven (notice the cool shades)

Measuring the apple trees we planted last spring in honour of each grandchild

Golf anyone?

Twenty-two years ago today

2011-10-14T13:45:00.004-04:00

Today's weather is not as extreme as it was 22 years ago when I married my Other Half at my parent's farm. It rained, hailed, thundered and lightning lit up the sky and I remember it as perfect. But if I were to do it all over again (and who wouldn't?) there would be a few minor changes like a significantly smaller dress, less pouffy hair and I wouldn't make my bridesmaids wear those awful bows in their hair and I wouldn't have had a great big one on my bum. But I definitely wouldn't change the man I was smart enough to marry at the tender age of 23 and I have to admit that I don't know what I'd say if one of my sons wanted to get married that young.

Whirlwind Weekend

2011-10-12T13:17:00.006-04:00

Well, I survived the week and it was worth all the prep to leave the boys with my Mum and get away to this lovely place for the wedding of my cousin to the Innkeeper's daughter.

We arrived on Friday afternoon and had brought a boat (as one does) so that we could get out on the water to explore my Other Half's old stomping grounds. He grew up summering in the Thousand Islands and I spend quite a bit of time there as well when we teenagers. That was pre 9/11 when you could jump in the boat with only a driver's license for ID and head over to A Bay (Alexandria Bay) NY for a night of partying and then boat home dodging Great Lakes freighters when you end up in the shipping lane by accident.

My brother, SIL, sister and BIL enjoying a tour of the Islands

My Other Half's grandmother's island which, according to family lore, was bought for either $10 or $1000 in the thirties. Either way is was a great deal.

Me and my little bro who I don't get to see often enough since he moved to the west coast

Same brother breaking into our room to get the cocktail supplies while I was out searching for wrapping paper.

Not a bad looking bunch

Much later that same night my SIL and I discovered that the bride had requested the local chip wagon be parked outside the reception. Can't think of a better late night snack after drinking and dancing than a gooey paper box of poutine.

The wedding was lovely and the dress I borrowed was perfect. It fulfilled my demands that it look as good as it felt. It was like wearing Lululemon yoga clothes while looking pretty damn good even in comparison with the twenty-somethings in very short dresses and unbelievably high heels. We made it home on Sunday in time to put two turkeys on the BBQ and had 13 sit down for dinner without a hitch. Monday we looked after our friends' two boys while they went house-hunting and then piled everyone into the car to head to my Mum's for a late lunch of hot turkey sandwiches which really is what Thanksgiving is all about - the leftovers. Of course, our foodie friends outdid us on that one by instead of using plain old bread, they made popovers, took the tops off, put the turkey inside with cranberry sauce and poured gravy over the whole thing. So happy that they are are thinking of moving up to our area to start a new restaurant.

It's gonna be a helluva week

2011-10-03T09:50:00.007-04:00

Now I have to be organized. Starting right now even though I am wasting time reading blogs and writing posts. I have today and tomorrow to get ready for Thanksgiving. Don't panic if you're south of the border, you didn't fall asleep and wake up seven weeks late. This coming weekend is our Thanksgiving up here in the Great (not yet white, thank god) North and I have to get everything bought, prepped and ready to go because my Other Half and I leave Friday morning for my cousins wedding and my Mum and Aunt will be staying with the boys until we get home on Sunday when we will have our turkey dinner. Not that it's really a big deal as we have never done an over the top, fully decorated and gourmet meal. But we also have friends who are thinking of moving up to our area coming on Sunday to join us and then go house hunting on Monday so that means that there will be the five of us, Mum, aunt, sister's three and four more guests for dinner. It's a five hour drive from where the wedding is so even if we skip the Sunday brunch it is going to be tight getting home and putting dinner on the table. And despite the fact (or perhaps because of it) my Mum did Thanksgiving for 30 years or more she no longer has any interest in the tradition. I am hoping I can leave her a list and Number One Son who is becoming quite the cook will be able to at least peel some potatoes and maybe even make the stuffing. We barbecue the turkey so it doesn't take up oven space and is done in much less time and it is so much tastier but I can't quite imagine my newly minted teenager sticking his hand in the bird to stuff it. Fingers crossed we can pull this off.

As for the wedding, I am looking forward to it, although what to wear is a little problematic on several fronts. One - the weather. It could be warm, sunny and a glorious fall day or it could be cold, wet and miserable much like today. What to wear? Open toed shoes? Stockings? Hell, I just put socks on for the first time this past weekend. I have two dress options, both black, and v-neck so I hope to find a really fun and funky necklace. When? I'm not sure as I work Wednesday and Thursday so it's today or tomorrow. Problem Number Two - what to wear? If I am honest this isn't a problem since it doesn't really matter what the 45 year old cousin of the groom wears since the bride is 29, a stylist who regularly appears on TV and the groom, 36 are both gorgeous, as are all of their friends. So again, what I wear isn't really relevant other than I want to feel and look good for myself and my date which is a bit of a struggle between being looking sleek and sexy both with the dress on and later when it finally comes off. But Spanx are a turn on, right?

So wish me luck on the pre-Thanksgiving organization front, the What to Wear dilemma and, of course, getting out of the house on Friday with the list of everything the boys have to do on the weekend - hockey, dry land training, friends over to play so they don't kill one another, enough food in the fridge for the never-ending eating they now do. It's never easy leaving even at the best of times, let alone leaving and coming home to a sit down dinner for 14. Oh well, it's two nights in this lovely place with my Other Half and hanging out with the grown ups in my family who make me laugh harder than anyone else. So wish me luck and Happy Thanksgiving and Columbus Day!

Not So Wordless Wednesday

2011-09-28T11:53:00.000-04:00

How can you promise something you can't promise?

2011-09-20T14:08:00.013-04:00

During the last week of the summer we stayed up at the cottage and experienced for the first time in my 45 years of cottaging the most terrifying thing - a cottage down the lake caught fire. Friends of ours who had just left our place to go home called to say there was a fire at the cabin across from theirs. We all jumped in the boat after calling the Park rangers (calling 911 is useless as there are no municipal emergency numbers for water access cottages on our lake and which are under provincial jurisdiction)

As soon as we were out of our little bay we could see the black smoke billowing around the point.

And then we saw the actual fire. In 15 minutes it had gone from the size of a campfire to this.

Boats from all over the lake were gathering in front of the site and within a half an hour the first plane arrived which was able to fill its pontoons with water and drop it on the fire.

We all had to admit it was pretty cool to watch the precision with which the pilots dumped the water on what was a very small area.

Fifteen or so minutes after the first plane arrived the second one flew in and it was a real water bomber that can fill its belly with thousands of gallons of water.

It scooped up belly after belly full of water and made at least 20 passes over the fire.

It looked huge to us sitting on the lake in our little boats. Fortunately the wind was off shore so the fire did not spread to the woods. If it had been blowing back into the trees it could have spread rapidly as the summer had been so dry. Our cottage is on the same side of the lake so conceivably it could have been in danger if it had turned into a real forest fire.

Although we stayed and watched the planes until the fire was completely out and we went back the next morning to see the damage - one cabin was completely destroyed but luckily the main one was untouched - our youngest was very shaken by the whole incident.

Over a month later he still asks me every night before bed, "Is everything is going to be okay?"

Then, after I reassure him everything is going to be fine he asks, "No fires, right Mum?"

And I respond, "No fires," but he then says, "You promise?"

I am not sure what to say to that one. I promise that we have smoke detectors (with working batteries) on each floor and they are hooked up to the alarm company and if they go off the fire department responds immediately (I know this because they did when cookies were burned) and we check to see that the oven and coffee maker are off before we go to bed every night but I can't promise him that there will never be a fire either at home or at the cottage and I hate that I can't promise him that. I can't imagine what it is like for a family who has lived through a house fire. How do they ever sleep again? How do they reassure their children that they are safe when they weren't? I guess it's something you can't think about too much like so many of the other dangers that surround us everyday. In the meantime we will continue to go through our bedtime ritual together as long as he needs to.

Betwixt and Between

2011-09-20T12:26:00.007-04:00

That's where I am these days. I have three increasingly independent boys who come and go from my house but it seems that at least half of the time they still desperately need me. The first week back to school my Other Half was away and I worked until 6 o'clock two days so the boys were on their own after school and they did just fine. I asked Number One to make sure that Number Three either came home or checked in with him if he was going to a friend's house. It's hard for the youngest, most of his friends are the eldest and so their parents still pick them up at school and aren't comfortable with a nine year old making his own plans. I have no problem with him checking in with his older brother before he goes off to play and they all seem to be able to make it home before I do. Luckily we don't have any evening sports at the moment to rush through dinner to get to so if I get home at six I can still make dinner (but I do have to get better at planning meals ahead) and it is almost civilized eating at around seven. In fact, this routine seems to be working. Okay, it worked one week and this week we will try it again as the builder is off flogging boats in Northern Michigan.

It's trying to find a balance between being there for them and not being there too much. I know they fight more when I am around, vying for attention - good or bad. It is hard especially with the youngest because I feel like I am pushing him too early. The others certainly weren't making their lunches in grade 4 but then he also gets the perks of doing other things way before his brothers ever did. Number One will be travelling with his ski team in November to Colorado and after the fiasco that was the trip to the Provincials last March with tearful phone calls every night I will not be getting him a North American cell plan while he is gone. He will have to manage sharing a room with others, eat whatever is put in front of him and get over the fear that every other guy on the team is shaving while he still searches in vain for any sign of peach fuzz.

Number Two has gotten off to a better start this year, he likes his teacher and came home yesterday very happy that he had finished a math test second to the smartest kid in the class and thought he had done well on it. It was so nice to see him being positive about school after last year and although he doesn't have very many of his close friends in his class he seems to be okay with that. He knows he has to have a good report card at Christmas if he is going to be allowed to miss school for skiing and that coupled with a wish for a phone I think we have a great incentive plan in place.

Balance - parenting, work, socializing, health. We all want to do it all and we want to do it well. I am never going to be a Type A person despite the fact that I am the eldest in my family and an Aries to boot. I don't want to run a marathon or bike 100 miles. I am never going to start my own business and I probably won't ever write a novel (a memoir perhaps). I want to raise my boys to be young men who value school as much as sports and who appreciate one other. I want to be healthy and live long enough to know my grandchildren and be the mother-in-law I constantly make notes to myself about. I want to be able to spend time with my Other Half and see him achieve a balance in life and success in business. I want to be able to enjoy this beautiful place we live in and to travel again to the places I didn't get to BC (Before Children) I want to ski in New Zealand and sail in the South Pacific. All these things seem so unattainable right now but if the speed at which the last ten years flew by is any indication I know that the boys will be off living their own lives in the blink of an eye and my Other Half and I will have time for ourselves again. I often say that I couldn't have had children in my twenties like so many people did, I had too many things to do and and I wasn't ready for that resposibility. My thirties were hard with four pregnancies and three young children. My Other Half was seldom home and I ate, slept and breathed children.

Now I feel ready to begin to branch out again, test myself beyond familial waters, set some goals and dream a little of life BC (Beyond Children - I know there's no AC since they will always be my boys). And I know we have a ways to go, Number Three won't be launched for another nine years and we have the dreaded Teenage Years to survive first but in nine years I will be 54 and that doesn't seem nearly as old as it did even just a few years ago and from the looks and lives of the women I know who are in already their fifties - I can't wait.

iPhone Friday on Tuesday

2011-09-13T11:45:00.006-04:00

My Other Half and I are heading out to a marine dealers meeting for the next few days so I though I would post a few of my most recent favourite iPhone photos. If you're a picture-taking nut like me it's so worth getting one just to be able to take such fun photos. They were all taken with the Hipstamatic App.

PJ at the net

Full Moon at Sunset over the Bay

On a Horse with a View

My New Mantra

2011-09-10T00:21:00.005-04:00

"Breathe deeply and love fiercely."

I read this in a comment at Flux Capacitor's most recent post. And it is my new parenting and, maybe even, life mantra.

Breathe deeply - that's what I need to remind myself to do everyday. Along with this being the first week back to school (so far so good - touch wood) my Other Half left early Wednesday morning and I worked til 6pm Wednesday and Thursday. The boys did just fine, thank you. In fact, they did much better without us around to nag about snacks and homework. But the bickering continues, morning, noon and night. I have to remove myself from the room when they really get going. They can fight over anything whether it's relevant or not, whether they know anything about the subject or not. If one brother says the sky is blue, the other says it's turquoise and the third says it's cloudy.

Love fiercely - this one is even more important. No matter how hard it is and I know what we are dealing with now is nothing compared to what might be coming down the pipe as we enter the unchartered territory of adolescence. One of the first things I remember hearing from a parenting expert was about always giving "unconditional love" but sometimes that's hard to do when all you really want to say is, "I love you, except when you drive me completely and utterly around the bend." But I like "love fiercely" because it sums up how I feel when they are pushing me to the limit and still I know I have to love them. No matter what.

So, breathe deeply.
And love fiercely

It applies to so many parts of out lives. Doesn't it?

A Truly Horrible One

2011-08-31T12:21:00.008-04:00

If you are lucky enough to have a cottage or country place you most likely have had one of these and like most truly horrible things they usually stick out more in your mind than the wonderfully good ones. I am talking about the dreaded horrible house guest. Now over the past ten years I have been spending most of the summer at our cottage as the de facto matriarch and I have hosted many, many guests. In the beginning the guests were made up of couples who came for fun, boozy weekends when we would eat, drink, swim, sail, fish, eat and drink some more. Everyone chipped in for beer and something to barbecue and we would all help cook and clean up. Later came the weekends of babies. My Other Half and I have a great group of old friends (see above boozey weekends) and we were lucky enough to all have children around the same time. Everyone would arrive with porta-cribs, exer-saucers, booster seats and baby swings. Again we would eat, drink, swim, sail and fish with interludes of nursing, diaper changes and soothing of various assorted colicky babies. Everyone pitched in and about the only thing we didn't share was breast milk.

Still later I would move up north for the entire summer with the boys and my Other Half would come up on Fridays and go back to the city early Monday morning. I would fill the weekdays with girlfriends and their kids. We'd sit on the dock watching toddlers pushing around toy boats in the water, preschoolers bravely jumping off the dock in their "lifeys" and we'd attach duelling jolly jumpers to door frames so the kids could jump while we cooked dinner, enjoyed a glass or bottle of wine. Again, everyone pitched in making chicken fingers, macaroni and s'mores by the campfire. Laundry was shared, counters were wiped and, as only with mothers, no one ever had to be asked to help, except the kids of course.

Now things are even easier. The first thing my friends ask when we plan a weekend is, "What can we bring? Other than wine, of course." They come bearing gifts of stinky cheese, a new recipe for pulled pork or all the fixings for make-your-own-pizzas. We cook, swim, eat, watch the kids learn to windsurf or dumping the sailboat in the middle of the lake. We have fabulous hors d'oeuvres on the dock and the occasional blender drink is whipped up. Even clean up is fun (for the adults) with the kids divided into teams for clearing the table and making sure all the boats are put away at the end of day. But every once in a while to my great, and perhaps naive surprise, a guest comes along who forgets that I don't run a full service hotel.

But this week one did. An old friend of the family's invited herself along with her hubby and two kids to the cottage presuming that we would put them up for the night before they dropped their daughter off at camp. And she went on to assume that they could stay with us for the three days while the daughter was away so they wouldn't have to drive back down to the city. I told her that this week was our only family time together before school starts next week so, while they were welcome to stay for one night, it wouldn't work out the other two. This, she said, was a problem since she really didn't want to have to drive two hours back to her sister's house. But for once I stood firm and repeated that we would be happy to see them for one night. How I regret those words now.

We had already made arrangements to go and visit friends on the day our guests were to arrive so I told them to make themselves at home until we got back. This might seem a bit inhospitable but remember, I didn't ask them to come and she had spent lots of time at our cottage growing up. I said we'd be back after 4pm as we had to stop for groceries on the way. (Hint, hint) We had already communicated extensively by email about the visit and she had yet to ask the first question every house guest should pose to their host which is, "What can we bring?" Even after the hint about groceries she still didn't bite so I bought more milk, dinner for nine people and three kinds of ice cream for dessert. We arrived back at the cottage to find the family making themselves right at home. They were all on the dock watching the seven year old boy paddle a kayak for the first time. They said hello and then asked if someone would take them on a boat tour of the lake. I offered my Other Half's services while I began making dinner. The son asked what we were having and when I told him chicken fajitas he looked confused.

I said, "You know, wraps with chicken, cheese, salsa and some veggies."

He replied, "Do you have any hamburger meat?"

I said, "Yes, I think I have some in the freezer. Would you like that in a wrap?"

"No," he replied. "I'd like hamburger and chips and cheese."

Okay, I thought, this is not a restaurant but it's only one meal. I can do hamburger.

Meanwhile the family was getting ready to go on their boat tour. Oh, did I mention they had no lifejackets for the kids? Now after spending all my life on one body of water or another the first (and only consistent) rule at the cottage is kids wear a life jacket in the boat and on the dock at all times. No exceptions. You never know how well other people's kids swim despite what the parents may say and it's never worth risking a child falling in when someone isn't looking. So we found a couple of lifejackets and off they went. My boys were being pretty good about these "random kids you invited, Mum" as Number Three Son delicately put it. And when they returned they even offered to play with them while I set the table. What were the parents doing while their children were entertained and their dinner was prepared you might ask? Well, they weren't offering to help on either front, instead they were both sitting on the couch punching away on their iPhones, occasionally looking up as I passed by with the plates or condiments. Then she got out her computer just as I called the kids in to eat and asked where she could plug it in to charge. This may be one of the few time I have wished we were further down the lake with no power.

We sat down to the meal and everyone seemed happy, the son with his hamburger meat and chips which, of course, now all the kids wanted. I poured myself another glass of wine and looked over at my Other Half who rolled his eyes discreetly. When the meal was over my kids cleared the table and I began loading the dishwasher as once again our guests sat down to what must have been terribly important business on their phones. Are they NATO ambassadors negotiating the truce in Libya? No, she's a sales rep and he runs some sort of automotive shop but I'm sure the emails they had to attend to were just as important as peace in the Middle East. We dished out ice cream to everyone and then I suggested the kids go and make a campfire for roasting marshmellows. I finished the dishes just as my guests finished playing, I mean, working on their phones and they all went outside to the firepit. I went to set up the kids beds and turn on the lights in the bedroom while thinking to myself, they can't possibly be this clueless. Have they never stayed at someone's house before? Do they show up for dinner parties without a bottle of wine or some sort of hostess gift? Should I slip an itemized bill under the door before they wake up in the morning?

I didn't, but I wish I had had the guts to. It would have read something like this

--------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for staying at Hotel Le Cottage.

Please be advised the following items will be charged

to your credit card at market price:

Room Rate - Two adults, Queen Bed

Two children, Twin beds

Turndown and Maid Service

Dinner for Four in our Dining room

Boat Tour of the lake (a fuel tax surcharge will be added)

Childcare and lifeguarding (extra fee for lifejackets)

Outdoor Activities - campfire, star gazing and sing along

Breakfast and childcare before 8am

Boat taxi to and from landing with porter to carry luggage

Early check in and late checkout

A gratuity of 15% will be added to the final amount.

We hoped you enjoyed your stay at Hotel Le Cottage on the Shores of Smoke Lake. We request that all future reservations be made 6 months in advance so that we will have time to come up with a reasonable excuse to say no.

(Disclaimer- If you are easily offended or especially sensitive to posts such as the above just remember - a good bottle of wine goes a long way)

Winding down the summer

2011-08-23T08:08:00.013-04:00

Feeling rather melancholy right now. Came down from the cottage yesterday and while we are going back up on Thursday I still feel like the summer is over and I missed the whole damn thing. I woke up early, before the sun even and came downstairs to make coffee and then crawl back into bed with my Kobo but once I was out of bed I realized how cold it was and I had an overwhelming urge to light a fire. Of course to light a fire I first had to get kindling and then I realized I had to clean out last winter's ashes which were up over the grate. By this time all three boys were up despite the fact that it's still wasn't even 7am. I sent them back upstairs to watch TV in my bed and promised to make muffins if they would just leave me alone for a little longer. I know that in exactly two weeks today they will not be up before seven, I'll be lucky if I can drag them out of bed by eight on the first day of school despite the fact that not one of them, not even the teenager (especially not the teenager) has slept in past 8am all damn summer. I have come to loath all my friends who say things like, "oh my kids sleep until noon" which is almost as bad as hearing, "My kids amuse themselves all day long while I work/read/garden." Who are these so-called kids? And where do I get them?

This summer has been a bit of a let down on most fronts - the business had been slow either due to the economy, the weather or both; Number Two Son had a terrible time at camp and probably won't be going back next year so I am already panicking about what to do with him for the month they are usually all away; despite my encouragement/threats not one of my children has made any attempt at calling a friend to do something on his own. They have hung around waiting for me to organize them. And now we are into the second last week of summer and My Other Half is planning on taking off next week (truth be told, there are no orders to fill so no boats to build) we had hoped to go away with the boys for a holiday but finances aren't conducive to spending money on anything other than groceries (which continue to increase exponentially in both quantity and price) so it will be the cottage and day trips which isn't so bad but not the break we were all hoping for and quite frankly, need. We live in a beautiful part of the world and as long as the weather doesn't turn autumnal overnight we canget out on the water, sailing, waterskiing and swimming. Not so bad after all.

I realize that the purpose of this blog, time and time again when I start out griping and end up thankful is self-directed therapy. Good thing too since it's way too early to pour a drink.

Happy Campers

2011-08-17T08:05:00.004-04:00

We spent a wonderful weekend with my Other Half's family. 18 people in three cabins and two tents. Lots of fun, food and craziness. As the summer winds down I feel like we are just getting started. Soccer finishes next week so we will be free for the last 10 days before the kids go back to school. I waffle between wanting these days to last forever and wishing we had year round schooling. Oh well, I guess that's why this post is labelled, "It's about family."

Leaping for Joy

Tubing

Number Two up on water skis for the first time

Number One showing off

Finally - a real smile

My gorgeous nieces

The boats at Pointe au Baril

My Other Half in his element

Two out of three ain't bad

2011-08-05T06:44:00.007-04:00

Thank you for attending to the matters we discussed so promptly. Re. item #1 - the burning smell was not, in fact the 18 year old water furnace at all but rather the 5 year old hot water heater next to it. A quick change of the lower element and we were charged the plumbing rate plus a few bucks for the part. Hallelujah! The house made of wood didn't burn down nor did we have to put a second mortgage on it!

I realize you are still working on item #2 but perhaps since we have put a family friend on the job to really crack the whip with the real estate agent who never calls and doesn't seem to have any sort of a plan for selling the property (do they ever?) will help. We had thought of cutting out the middle man altogether but will give him until the end of the month to get the damn place sold thus freeing up some badly needed cash.

Regarding Item #3 - thank you, thank you, thank you for sending Sue our way. She came via a friend whose son had been going to see her and all of us, my Other Half and Number One Son, really liked her and think she will be a great help going forward on this journey of raising an very serious and focussed young man. She calls herself a "Sport/Mind Coach" and takes a holistic approach to working with young people. She is not just about raising a superstar but making sure that they can cope with the stresses of competition as well as keeping their options open academically and socially. She is a former high school principal, professional skater and seems to know what she is talking about. Hopefully working with her will help Number One learn to manage his anxiety and help him to enjoy the sports he so loves to do again.

So, not to be pushy but now that the Americans have dealt (sort of) with their debt crisis could we stop with all the doomsaying and maybe have a little good news come our way so that people can enjoy the last few remaining weeks of this summer and maybe even order a boat or two.

Again, thank you for your consideration and speedy attention to these matters.

Sincerely,

Cid

(somewhat relieved mother but still anxious home and small business owner)

P.S. If it's not too much to ask could you knock all the boys' teams out of the soccer playoffs so that we can just go up and stay at the cottage for the last three weeks before school starts?

To whom it may concern,

2011-08-02T13:42:00.004-04:00

I need three things to happen as soon as possible.

The furnace to be fixed easily and for not a lot of money
The old shop property to sell immediately and for a lot of money
My son's challenges to be surmountable and not lifelong

Thank you for your consideration in these matters. I look forward to seeing changes made ASAP.

Sincerely,

Cid

(worried mother, nervous home & small business owner)

Sushi + Sailing = Bliss

2011-07-26T09:17:00.000-04:00

How are we doing so far?

2011-07-13T08:29:00.007-04:00

Well, we're are half way through our child free time and so far so good.

Have a picnic dinner at the beach - not yet but have gone for lots of walks on the beach
Have nothing but cheese and wine for dinner - we have but it's too easy (see #14)
Go sailing after work - not yet but sailed for four hours on Sunday
Invite friends out for a cocktail cruise - hard with the lack of wind in the evenings
Sleep naked - a necessity with the heat wave we've been having
Go to boot camp two mornings a week for three weeks - not quite but did go to Stand Up Paddleboard Pilates!
Watch at least three movies that are not cartoons or in 3D - saw Larry Crowne
Touch up all the trim that I started painting two years ago and is chipped again - DONE!!
Get all the carpets and upholstery cleaned - DONE!!
Sort the treasures from the junk in the boys' rooms - still trying to steel myself for this one
Ride Jazz at least two times a week - once a week is a better than not at all
Walk River every morning - he's been going to work with My Other Half early
Get the problem with my photos figured out and find out about storing them in (on?) the cloud (whatever that means) - haven't gotten up the nerve to call someone yet
Make some delicious dinners that the kids would never eat - lots of salads & seafood
Eat at at least one of the four newly opened restaurants in town - one down, three to go
Sunbathe by the pool - still not likely but it's nice to dream
Make mojitos with the mint that is overtaking the garden - not yet but made garlic scape pesto and have put it on everything
Put this wallpaper up in the powder room - it's ordered!
Take my Other Half riding - not yet as it's been so hot
Put up some new photos in the kitchen - have to resolve #13 first
Write the boys lots of letters now that the postal strike is finally over - have sent two each so far
Go down to the city for a girls night out - haven't made it to the city but have had one girls dinner and going out again tomorrow night
Recharge my parenting batteries in preparation for the other 5 weeks of summer - YES!

River enjoying his Only Child status

Saturday we head to camp for Visitor's Day. Not sure what to expect, last year was okay but we were picking up Number Three Son at the end of his ten day stay and he was very excited to show us his cabin and the Bio Hut. We didn't actually find Number One until we combed most of the island. He and his cabin mates were doing charcoal sketches on a distant rock (one of the reason I love this camp) Number Two was just coming back from a paddle with his cabin as we were leaving. I made the mistake of jumping off the barge to go and say goodbye and he got very upset.

This year I asked them if they wanted us to come and, if so, they had to promise to be happy for my sake as much as theirs. Number One will be out on his canoe trip and we won't see him at all and I am going to ask my sister if she, her husband and PJ would like to come to act as a distraction from any potential homesickness. I know the boys are all as happy as clams while they are there but they do admit that when they have down time (which is not very often) when they think about home. So we will just have to have a whirlwind tour of the island (for the 10th time), see the snakes (ugh) in the Bio Hut, have a picnic with homemade cookies and other treats. But since I will be single parenting as My Other Half won't be able to join us I will be strong for both of us and enjoy that moment just as we arrive when I see my boys before they see me. It is at that moment that you can see each one, not as someone's son or brother but just the boy they are and maybe even the man they will become.

Summer so far ...

2011-07-06T08:18:00.004-04:00

After much angst and worry the year long gestation period resulted in the launch of the latest addition to our family business - The Rossiter 17

Proud designer and builder at the helm

Last day of school party at the beach

The Boys in their Hudsons Bay Burhkas

Rolling out the dough for grilled flatbreads

Hot on the grill

PJ and his cousins

Sometimes I feel like Kate

2011-06-29T11:00:00.004-04:00

I love everything about Katharine Hepburn - her movies (especially Philadelphia Story), her style and her wit. Years ago her biography was one of the first I ever read. She had so many great lines that were all her own not written by a screen writer.

I have many regrets, and I'm sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret... if you have any sense, and if you don't regret them, maybe you're stupid.

Dressing up is a bore. At a certain age, you decorate yourself to attract the opposite sex, and at a certain age, I did that. But I'm past that age.

Her Connecticut estate is up for sale. As they say, if those walls could speak what stories they could tell.

23 Childfree Things to Do

2011-06-20T14:07:00.015-04:00

The boys leave for camp on July 2 and are gone for 23 days. This is the first time all three are going for the full month (in camp time) Number Three Son is nervously excited. For the last two years he has enjoyed his 10 days at home as an only child but he also is looking forward to going on a longer canoe trip, having more time on the ropes course and in the archery range that the campers only get when they are there for three and a half weeks.

So here's my To Do List. I hope I can accomplish at least some of it and that the time doesn't just fly and I end up wondering, "what the hell happened to those 23 days?"

Have a picnic dinner at the beach
Have nothing but cheese and wine for dinner (repeatedly)
Go sailing after work
Invite friends out for a cocktail cruise
Sleep naked
Go to boot camp two mornings a week for three weeks
Watch at least three movies that are not cartoons or in 3D
Touch up all the trim that I started painting two summers ago and is now chipped again
Get all the carpets and upholstery cleaned
Sort the treasures from the junk in the boys' rooms
Ride Jazz at least two times a week
Walk River every morning
Get the problem with my photos figured out and find out about storing them in (on?) the cloud (whatever that means)
Make some delicious dinners that the kids would never eat
Eat at at least one of the four newly opened restaurants in town
Sunbathe by the pool
Make mojitos with the mint that is overtaking the garden
Put this wallpaper up in the powder room
Take my Other Half riding
Put up some new photos in the kitchen
Write the boys lots of letters now that the postal strike is finally over
Go down to the city for a girls night out
Recharge my parenting batteries in preparation for the other 5 weeks of summer

An Almost Perfect Weekend

2011-06-20T08:41:00.012-04:00

We finally made it back up to the cottage and after the most miserable spring, the last weekend before summer officially arrives on Tuesday was pretty close to perfect. We delivered a couple of boats on the way north and arrived in time to have a drink on the dock and meet my best friend. We cut the lawn, planted flowers, set up the badminton net and cleaned out the pantry so the place looks loved and lived in and ready for its 64th summer.

The boys in their new Hudson's Bay Blanket-inspired swim towels (they are gorgeous)

Trying to shoot the falls

River cooling off

Rolling out the dough for Rosemary Yogurt Flatbread

Grilling them to golden perfection

Getting ready for the first leg of the the Smoke Lake Triathlon - 750m swim

Heading out on the cycling portion - 20km

I didn't get a photo of the last leg which was a 5km run or the finish line which involved ice cream cones but it was an amazing accomplishment for both of them. Me? I'm the designated driver of the chase boat and held down the fort on the dock until they returned.

We tried to stretch Father's Day out as long as possible by not leaving until 6:30 pm and Number Two Son's attempt at being helpful unfortunately resulted in a trip to Emerg and four stitches after he sliced his leg open on something sharp in the recycling bags he was carrying. But despite that little setback it was an almost perfect weekend. Now the countdown is on to the end of school with parties and field trips galore and of course, only 12 days until the boys go off to camp for a month. But who's counting?

Random Tuesday Ramblings

2011-06-14T10:59:00.002-04:00

This is a photo of the grain elevators in the Collingwood Harbour. It is hard to imagine that not very long ago this was a bustling port and ship building centre for the Great Lakes. I remember my godmother travelling up to see the last ship built being launched in 1986. I was a self-absorbed 20 year old and didn't understand why anyone would care about something like that. Since the yards closed the town has allowed developers to take over the waterfront and although there are some lovely paths and boardwalks along the water most of the land is private and the view is cut off by houses. The elevators themselves are slowly disintegrating, at one time there was talk about renovations with a restaurant and shops but it seems that idea stalled. The crazy thing is that there is no where to eat on the water from Wasaga Beach at the southern end of Georgian Bay to Tobermory at the tip of the peninsula which separates the Bay from Lake Huron despite the fact that that is the number one thing tourists (and locals) want to do when they visit the area. We have seven restaurants in our tiny town of 1400 souls, four of which have recently undergone renovations and reopened but so far it doesn't look like any of them are going to be the kind of place to take the kids to and not one is on the water.

If I had the money I would open a family-friendly restaurant like Flatbreads in Portland, Maine. One where you could arrive at by boat or wander down in the evening to sit at one of the picnic tables in your bath suit and flip flops with a cold beer. The kids would be kept happy watching the pizza cooking in the giant, wood fired oven and the food, of course, would be fresh, local and organic. Wishful thinking on my part but it just seems that in an area that is known more and more for great restaurants, local wine and artisans we deserve a fun spot to take the kids or meet friends for a dinner that won't break the bank. So if anyone has any connections with the Flatbreads guys (I couldn't find a contact on their website for the head office) please send it my way.

Random Tuesday

2011-06-07T11:23:00.010-04:00

Aaaahhh . . . summer. And it's about freakin' time. Winter lasted until Easter and spring was so cold and wet that I thought that my Other Half (the boat builder) was truly going to have to build an ark. Good for the tulips but now the lilacs are out (about a month late) and I am ready for the peonies to bloom and to finally plant my tomatoes.
We got out on the sailboat on the weekend. No wind but it was lovely to be back out on the water again.
Had a blast at an 80's Prom Party last Friday. I promise the photos are forthcoming but sufficed to say, there was lots of big hair, taffeta and a late night for the Class of '84.
Only three weeks until school is over and three weeks, three days and five hours until the boys all go to camp for the month. But who's counting?
It's been three weeks now without indulging in what had become my twice weekly chocolate croissant and grilled cheese sandwich habit while at work. I have also given up bread during the week and, although I haven't noticed a major weight change, I do feel better and I am going to Pilates again so hopefully my energy level will increase. My summer resolution is to get back into shape as well as to touch up all the trim in the house while the boys are away (this was my goal two summers ago and I only finished the main floor and, of course, it's all chipped again)
Number Two & Three Sons' hamsters became the proud parents of seven (yes, seven!) babies two weeks ago. Mother and offspring are doing well (unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your point of view) the babies no longer look like naked mole rats and are quite cute. Now the question is how to get rid of them since natural selection did not take place. Anyone want a baby hamster or two or three?
Number Three Son celebrated his 9th birthday yesterday with eight friends. They had a ball jumping on the trampoline and staging a major water fight but I was a little surprised when it came time to open presents. There were only two wrapped gifts. The rest gave the birthday boy cash and a Visa gift card. He, of course, was thrilled. Me? Not so much. It seems a bit over the top for a nine year old to spend his post-party downtime counting dollar bills instead of playing with new LEGO.
Trying to decide what to do with the boys when they get home from camp. They all want to be home during the week rather than at the cottage so they can play soccer but that's only in the evenings. I am thinking about tennis and golf lessons but what I really want them to do if they aren't going to let me be up at the cottage all month is to find out what other kids do. We are so lucky to live in a small town where they can jump on their bikes and go to the beach or explore or even just hang by the pool with some supervision, of course. But I am not Julie McCoy and will not spend all day driving them around from activity to activity and they can't veg in front of a screen all day. They aren't used to this so I need help pointing them in the right direction. Any suggestions?
Had our first impromptu BBQ of the season on Saturday even though My Other Half and I were exhausted from the Prom the night before. The weather was warm, the sun stays up until well after 9pm and I had bought a ton of local asparagus to roast. The kids were happy to be running around until well after their bedtime and the adults were happy to sit and drink another glass of wine while they ran. Aaaaahhhh . . . summer.

Friday, I'm in love

2011-05-27T10:03:00.004-04:00

I am, but that's old news of course, just like this song from The Cure. Tonight I am looking forward to sushi and a movie with my Other Half while the boys are at the semi-final game of the Memorial Cup with my Dad. Tomorrow we have to get the mast up on the sailboat rain or shine (rain, most likely) so that we can get out on the water when summer finally decides to grace us with its presence. Tomorrow night its Lobsterfest when 1200 of our closest friends gather at the local hockey arena to eat crustaceans, drink draft and dance on the beer and butter-slicked rink floor. Only in a small town you say? Pity. Have a great weekend everyone!

P.S. Have you read Kyran Pittman's Planting Dandelions yet? It's a wonderful compliation of her blog posts and essays about life as a transplanted Newfie living in Arkansas, wife and MOB.

Flirting and Firemen

2011-05-14T09:20:00.000-04:00

I have been thinking a lot lately about flirting. I have been feeling like it would be nice to have someone other than the wonderful man with whom I sleep notice me. I already know that he loves and wants and needs me and I know how lucky I am to have him and to love, want and need him back but there is something about flirting with a stranger or even an acquaintance that adds a little bit of excitement to a wife and mother of three's life. But indulging in that thrill can be dangerous and I am not sure that I amactually cut out for living on quite that much of the edge. Call me chicken but I have flown solo a couple of times lately while my Other Half was away and one night in particular my friend ended up being picked up at the bar by a boy who was, at most, half our age. Not my idea of fun especially as he interrupted some female bonding, a rare opportunity for two mothers of three children each. The last thing we needed was a boy coming between our in-depth discussion of What Not To Wear at the Oscars and whether you really have to change the sheets every time a kid throws up in bed. (My rule is that if it's more than once during the night they can sleep on a towel)

The second time was at our ski club's annual Ladies Day, a bit of a drink and dance-fest for women only. This year the ladies who were in charge and who are a good decade younger than our bunch brought in a team of firefighters who were there to serve drinks and hawk their fundraising calendars. They seemed like a nice bunch of guys who had already raised a lot of money for various charities and we had fun when Pete, one of the older (he was 47) guys, joined us on the far reaches of the hill for fresh tracks (one of the best things about Ladies Day is that most of the ladies are too worried about getting helmet head and don't bother to ski at all, leaving the snow for us diehards) But when the show began it got embarrassing for all concerned. In the past we have had a country & western caller and learned to line dance; a bevy of belly dancers who tried to teach us to wiggle our hips and one year we even donned togas and went back to our sorority days but this year it was all about the firemen's talent. One guys "played" a keyboard behind a screen with the "look Ma, no hands" approach. Gross. Another one danced around to "Save a Horse, Rise a Cowboy." Tacky. Now these guys apparently really were firemen, not Chippendales dancers and I think most of them were as embarassed as we were. Well, as some of us were. It seems I might have been one of the few to find it all a little sad. I wish I had taken pictures of the 50 year old plus women jostling themselves into position to dance with these guys. Their perfectly botoxed features actually showing some emotion as they frantically tried to get the men's attention. It was a frightening sight to say the least.

Here we are - protecting Pete.

As for the flirting? Well, I think our friend Pete saw our bunch as a safe haven from the pelvis-grinding mob. He would retreat over to the corner where we were all dancing together to catch his breath and pull up his suspenders (they started out in full firefighting gear) since we were no threat to him and he was no threat to us old married-types. I was only sorry that my best friend who is single had decided not to join us this year since I have never been able to set her up with anyone (living in the smug-married world that I do) and Pete was, in the brief time we hung out with him, worth a second look and maybe even a drive to the suburbs where his hall is located.

So I think, as much as I like the idea of flirting, in reality I will stick to flexts (flirty texts) with my Other Half which we started while he was away and seem to be continuing now that he is back at home. Much more fun and who knows what they might lead to after the kids are asleep ...

We all know this but can we do it?

2011-05-05T07:59:00.003-04:00

Touring with the Boys

2011-05-04T08:54:00.000-04:00

For a person who never seems to make it farther than the grocery store several times a week I have been out and about quite a bit lately. First there was the trip to Prince Edward County, Montreal and the Eastern Townships in Quebec with the girls from the Cheese Gallery and then it was a marathon journey to the end of the continent with my boys. Actually we left the continent and drove three quarters of the way up the Island of Cape Breton to deliver a boat. Now anyone who knows anything about the Maritime provinces would understand that taking a row boat to Nova Scotia is like taking coals to Newcastle but in this wired (or wireless) world of ours a man from Alberta ordered a boat from Ontario and had it delivered to his cottage in Nova Scotia.

Originally my Other Half and I had planned to make the journey on our own, a little birthday get-away for me paired with some business to cover the costs. We did the trip last summer and had a fine time although it is a long drive - two days straight. It would be quite a bit faster if the state of Maine didn't jut so far north causing Canadians to have to drive up and around it. There are very few roads in northern Maine other than private ones cut by logging companies so even if we didn't mind the hassle of crossing the border it would still mean driving out of our way to get through. It took about 18 hours to get to Fredericton, New Brunswick where we stopped for the first night. The boys were great, happily playing hockey on the Playstation in the back of the truck. We slept for six hours and then pushed on to Nova Scotia.

Crossing the border into Nova Scotia

Just a small part of Lac Bras D'or - the salt water lake in the centre of Cape Breton Island which two of our rowboats now call home

After delivering the boat we turned around and headed back to Moncton, NB where we had noticed a hotel with a two story water slide just off the highway. This was a huge hit with the boys who were, after two days stuck in the car, ready to let loose. We found a fun BBQ place to eat dinner but the boys were disappointed when they weren't allowed into the arcade. Turns out the video games they spied from outside were actually high tech one-armed bandits or VLTs. The next morning we promised that if they came with us for a walk they could spend the rest of the morning in the pool so off we went to see the famous Bay of Fundy Flower Pot Rocks at low tide.

What we didn't realize until we got to the park that it was closed for the winter. Now I have a fundamental problem with anyone closing a natural phenomenon so my Other Half and I decided that this was the time to introduce the boys to the art of trespassing.

After a great adventure exploring the tidal flats of the Bay we piled back in the car and headed west towards Quebec City where I had booked us into the stately Chateau Frontenac to celebrate my entry into middle age.

Sons Numbers Two and Three quickly embraced Chateau living

They loved exploring the cobblestone streets of the old city

The Boys' Motto - Why walk when you can run?

Our home away from home

View of the St Lawrence River

What's not to like about a city ringed by real canons?

A 16th century home

Celebrating my birthday

Saying goodbye to the Suite Life

A final stop in my old stomping grounds - Montreal
and a visit to the infamous St Viateur Bagel Factory

The trip was a success if you don't count the fact that every fuse in the car was blown when the boys plugged in the Playstation, a DS and my MacBook at the same time. Luckily the DVD player still worked and we found a dying Blockbuster in Montreal where we stocked up on $4 movies including the entire National Lampoon's Vacation collection plus The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Random Tuesday

2011-05-03T10:33:00.012-04:00

I am so sick of the non-starter spring we have been having this year. Cold, wet and miserable sums it up. We had one nice day on the weekend and I got outside to clean up the garden. The daffodils all opened and the tulips sprung out the of the earth but then the temperature dropped and the tulips are firmly closed. Our sailboat is scheduled to go in the water on Sunday and I am hoping for warmth and sun. I can't wait to get out for after school sails and cocktail cruises.

The boys and I got up at 5am to watch the Royal Wedding. Number Two Son had set his alarm for 4:30am but his clockwas ahead by an hour so that we (meaning me) were woken up at 3:30am. Finally got back to sleep just in time to hear my alarm go off followed by the phone ringing. It was my sister standing outside my door wondering why it was still locked. We all celebrated with OJ and Prosecco, fresh croissants and strawberries. The boys were all incredibly into it and insisted watching to the very end. After Wills and Kate drove around in Charles's Aston Martin I told them they had to get ready for school where, thankfully, they weren't the only ones who were late.

The celebrations continued with as I spent the morning making scones and crustless sandwiches for The Cheese Gallery's Royal High Tea. We all dressed up in hats, the odd tiara and I even dug out my grandmother's white gloves.

The marathon wrapped up in the wee hours of Saturday morning at Jazzmania, the adult pub crawl our little town holds every April. My Other Half and I hosted the second annual Grilled Cheese pre-party which was by all accounts a great success. In fact, I couldn't get people to leave. The bands begin playing downtown at 8pm and at 9pm I had to turn out the lights and tell everyone to move along. Some suggested that next year we just book a band and become a venue ourselves so that no one would have to leave. The rain held off and we had fun listening to some great music and generally acting like university kids drifting from pub to restaurant to bar. As I have said before our little town has a very high concentration of fine drinking and dining establishments.

Yesterday Number One Son and I went to clean out our lockers at the ski hill (they finally closed the club the weekend before Easter) he insisted that we could still have skied but I, for one, am quite happy to say goodbye to the snow. The boys did get out on the golf course on Saturday and soccer starts next week so that should keep them busy and out of trouble or so I thought.

Last night I got a phone call from our neighbour and friend who wanted to know if I had heard about one of my boys daring her son to eat a worm (there are lots around thanks to all the rain)? I had, in fact, as Number Two came to ask me for his bank card so he could go and take $10 out of his account. I explained to him (and the Mum) that I really couldn't condone paying someone to eat a worm but since he did it then I supposed Number Two had better make good on the dare. Apparently it didn't taste too bad.

Did a bit of a spring clean yesterday since it wasn't warm enough to get outside in the garden and took four boxes and two garbage bags to our local charity shop. Said goodbye to at least 75 stuffed animals the boys haven't touched in over a year, all my old pregnancy books (so long What to Expect) and at least twenty old puzzles and board games. I wasn't organized enough to cull through everything and take some of it to sell at the consignment shop Reinspired Home which opened recently and is my new favourite haunt but at least it's out of the house and there'll always be more to purge.

Of course last night was another late one as we stayed up to see what direction our country was heading and it was a bit of a shocker. It wasn't that I didn't expect Harper's Conservatives to be re-elected but I don't think anyone predicted the decimation of the Liberals and Bloq Quebecois. The NDP's orange wave quickly turned into a crush as they wiped out the Quebec Separatists in their own backyard. In the past the socialist NDP has held a maximum of 43 seats, last night they won 102, including one candidate who spent part of the campaign in Las Vegas. What does this all mean for Canada? It seems we are becoming more polarized with a right wing (by Canadian standards) majority government in office for the next four years and a left wing official opposition. It means that Prime Minister Harper can push through just about any legislation he chooses and that is a worry. While minority governments do result in elections more often they also tend to force the government to work with the other parties and when you have a leader like Harper who doesn't play well with others that's not necessarily a bad thing. What's next? I have no idea.

I Need Help!

2011-05-02T16:29:00.004-04:00

It seems that we have to paint the house and I need help choosing a colour or colours as we have to do the siding, trim, shutters, doors and garage doors. My first inclination is grey with white trim, red front and side doors and black garage doors. It's classic and simple. I have been looking at photos of New England style houses and there are so many choices. I don't want green or beige, it seems every new house built around here are those colours and we painted the house we built 15 years ago green with beige trim. I don't like yellow but have been toying with blue. My favourite look is the classic weather grey cedar shakes with blue trim. We will have to redo the roof soon and although we can't afford real cedar shakes I have looked at Enviroshakes which look like cedar and are that lovely silver grey.

So, what do you think? Please give me any suggestions and links to sites that feature colourful houses. I'll let you know what we decide and when we actually get around to painting it.

Cheese Tour 2011

2011-04-21T07:55:00.000-04:00

So when my employers asked me if I wanted to accompany them on a little Cheese Tour of Prince Edward County, Ontario and then on to Montreal, Quebec I felt I might jeopardize my job my saying no so I reluctantly said goodbye to my family and hopped in the car with Casey & Wendy to do what had to be done.

First stop - Fifth Town in Picton, Ontario. A state-of-the-art cheese making facility in the heart of Prince Edward County. Ontario's newest wine region and foodie destination. Fifth Town is LEED certified and operates with solar and wind power, collects milk fresh from local dairies and runs education programmes and tours year round.

Checking if the curds are ready

The bosses enjoying maple syrup-soaked and maple-sugar dipped Quark on a stick

Transferring the cheese to the moulds. Today's batch was Cape Vessey,

a washed rind goat's cheese and one of my favourites.

Squeezing it into the moulds by hand

Just some of the goat, sheep and cow's milk cheeses made at Fifth Town

Great name for an antique shop

Meeting Gilles at the Atwater Fromagerie in Montreal's famous Atwater Market

Just a portion of the cheese counter

In the beer cooler surrounded by local brews

After Atwater we headed out of the city to the Eastern Townships and L'Abbaye St Benoit du Lac. Unfortunately I wasn't able to take any photos of the Abbey or their cheese making operation which has been run by the Benedictine Monks since the 1940's. Their Bleu Benedictin cheese is one of my favourite blues.

We returned to Montreal to visit Dependances, an importer and distributor of European cheese. Here we are in the massive refrigerated rooms where the cheeses are unpacked from containers and then repackaged to be shipped across the country.

Casey helping to unload the container

A huge pallet of the "Better Than Sex Cheese" aka Chateau de Bourgogne

The trip was a huge success if you don't count Casey getting food poisoning from some bad escargot and we met some wonderful people. After meeting Stephanie, the Master Cheese maker at Fifth Town, Lucy from Dependances, Alain "the godfather" of Quebec cheese and the monk who ran the Abbey fromagerie, I decided that cheese people are happy people because they get to spend their time making and selling something that brings people together the world over - good food made from fresh ingredients and love.

How to Enter Middle Age - The Chateau Frontenac

2011-04-16T21:15:00.003-04:00

Life Lessons: letting them learn on their own

2011-03-09T09:46:00.007-05:00

This week has already been a long one and it's only Wednesday. Everyone is looking forward to Spring Break next week although the weather doesn't look like it's going to give us much in the way of spring-like temperatures. My Other Half returned home after 15 long days on the road. He battled a snowstorm on the NY Thruway, a screw up at the border which resulted in having to wait two hours before he was allowed back into his own country with boats clearly labelled "Made in Canada." And he returned to the crushing news that Number One Son did not make it to the Provincial Ski Racing competition. This past season has not been B's year, he has battled anxiety and fear of crashing and despite his unbelievable ability to do well in training it did not translate into results and he didn't earn enough points to take him to the finals. Unfortunately most of the boys on his team will be going up north over the break to race. To add to it all Numbers Two and Three won three medals each in the Club Championships on Sunday and balancing their excitement with being sensitive to Number One's disappointment in his own performance was difficult to say the least. We've been through this before and it never gets any easier.

It is so hard to not try and make everything all better for your children. I am not, or at least I try not, to be one of those parents who fixes everything. I knew there was a good chance he wouldn't make it and I could have badgered the coaches to try and get another spot for him and they might have been able to but I don't believe that everyone should get a prize whether they have earned it or not. One of my issues with ski racing is that it has, at this level anyways, become a "pay to play" sport. As long as the parents are willing to pay for their kids to compete the coaches will take them. There are no try outs or cuts. Everyone makes the team. That is until the end when it really comes down to how you did in the races over the course of the season and unfortunately our son didn't do well enough to make it. It is a bitter lesson but a good one, one that we all have to learn at some point in our lives. He is an incredible athlete and his hockey team is still in the playoffs thanks, in large part, to B's incredible goal tending skills. It will be a tough weekend as he is back on the hill with the boys who are leaving next Tuesday for the Provincials but I am already so proud of him and how he is handling it. I just hope his friends are sensitive without being patronizing at their team party on Saturday as everyone knows who made it and who didn't. We won't make excuses for him and I know he has learned the first in a life-long series of lessons, one that I wouldn't try to shield him from no matter how much I feel his pain.

I've fallen in love all over again

2011-03-05T07:21:00.013-05:00

The Old Married Couple

My IRL friend Kelly is battling cancer and has a great blog called Kicking Cancer Ass in which she chronicles the ups and downs of her treatment, wigs and even a kitchen renovation. Her last post included these words and really puts things in perspective for me as I get overwhelmed by kids, work and stuff.

This new cancer club that I have joined reluctantly has had its pros and cons;

You know the cons, I'll try and focus on some of the pros.... Once you are in, it is very difficult to get out.

The members are really supportive. "Seize the Day" and "Live for the moment" take on a whole new meaning.
You look at your friends and family in a whole new light; They are truly amazing.

And finally, I've fallen in love with my husband all over again - I'm not sure how I could have got through this without him...he's awesome

My Other Half and I have been together since I was 16, give or take a few interludes during the university years and after all that time I try very hard not to take this wonderful man I was smart enough to marry for granted. But even after all these years he can still surprise me. He has been on the road for the last two weeks so last Monday I flew down to Boston to spend three days helping him out at the Boat Show. If anyone has worked a trade show you know how unbelievably boring it is to stand around a booth for 8 to 10 hours a day trying to make eye contact with passers by so that you will have someone to talk to thus making the time go by faster. But when you do reel in a potential customer they might turn out to be one of those "Looky Loos" who have no intention whatsoever of buying a boat, they just want to tell you all about the one they are building in their garage and which cost them half of your custom-made, professionally-built boats.

But back to surprises. Now despite the fact that my Other Half is not exactly technologically savvy he has embrace the art of texting and it is kind of fun getting late night and early morning "thinking of you texts." And while they weren't technically "sexts" they did have me wondering what he was up to. Well, Monday I went straight from the airport to the show and endured six hours of boredom while trying to steal a quick hug and kiss despite his aversion to any form of PDA. After the show closed at 8 o'clock we had dinner downtown at Scollary Square before heading back to his bachelor pad in a suburban all suites hotel. There, he had stocked the fridge with Prosecco, my favourite triple cream cheese and homemade chocolate dipped strawberries! Yes, he had bought Hershey's kisses, melted them and dipped the strawberries himself. Unfortunately after the delicious lobster mashed potatoes and steak at the restaurant I couldn't eat another bite but we were able to continue on with the rest of his romantic plans. He had asked me to bring our travel Scrabble game and we ended up laughing ourselves silly trying to make up erotic words. Probably not what the writers of whatever blog or website where he found the idea intended but for an "old married couple" it was a wonderful evening on all counts.

The next day we hit the Convention Centre floor again and decided instead of going out to dinner that night we would take home some sushi and dip into the Prosecco and strawberries. We watched a couple of Sex in the City reruns (he likes chick flicks too) and then enjoyed the privacy of a hotel room with no chance of being interrupted by either a dog or child. Bliss.

Young, Footloose and Fancy Free Couple

Now it's back to reality with children, homework, hockey games and ski races. But only two more sleeps until he's back so I might have to do a little exploration myself of websites for Old Married Couples, although I'll try to avoid the ones that suggest greeting your spouse at the door encased in plastic wrap.

And so it begins ...

2011-02-18T06:23:00.006-05:00

My Other Half left me this morning. For two weeks. He's off on the boat show circuit and will be away for the next two weeks and, more importantly, three weekends. Gulp. He'll be missing 4 or 5 ski races, the next round of hockey playoffs, the club championships and a trip to Toronto to see Billy Elliot. The boys are already worried about who will sharpen their skis. Me? I'm more worried about taking the three of them on the subway for the first time in four years and whether I/they will survive until the second week when I hightail it to Boston for three days to help S. out at the show.

So I will take it one day at a time. Today I'm dropping the boys off at the ski hill for training and then I am heading to the barn to see if my horse remembers who I am. I haven't ridden since before Christmas and I am persona non grata amongst my riding buddies. But the temperature is well above zero this morning despite the crazy wind blowing the next cold front in from the Arctic and I am going to enjoy every minute of it.

Stay tuned for more updates from Single Motherland.

Happy?

2011-02-10T09:19:00.006-05:00

I've been reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin and it has really got me thinking about being happy. Right now, in the depths of a frigid Canadian winter I'm having a tough time feeling anything but a longing for spring. My boys are all having issues of their own and my Other Half heads off on the boat show circuit soon for three weeks. The petty annoyances of life are all contriving to bog me down. The bickering amongst my boys, the never-ending snow piling up outside the door, never having enough time to do all the things I know I should be doing, let alone the things I want to do. When people make lists of the things that make them happy they are usually the little things much like the list I made when I first started this blog which is still there somewhere down at the bottom of the page on the right. There is nothing wrong in taking pleasure from the little things it's just that right now I need to think about the big picture. Rubin quotes William Butler Yeats who said, "Happiness, is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing."

This is the problem for me at this point, smack dab in the middle of my life - I am not growing while everyone around me is. My sons are growing literally and will in a very short time all be taller than me but they are also growing in so many other ways. In their maturity and independence and as people. My Other Half and my sister are both growing businesses, shooting for the big leagues, creating what they hope will be their legacy. Friends around me are growing as athletes, pushing themselves physically and some are growing emotionally, leaving a relationship or a career after many years. As for me, I am the ultimate in stasus. I have been in the same relationship for over 25 years, I haven't had a career change since before the boys were born. I haven't trained to run a marathon or even entered the Club Championships. And after starting this blog two and a half years ago I haven't really done much with it. I haven't started writing the great Canadian novel or had anything published in the local paper. So all the little things that do make me happy aren't adding up to much and I am finding myself on autopilot. Telling myself that I am doing the best I can raising my kids and being a supportive wife. I make lists and I have even crossed a few things off them but I think Rubin is right, what I need now is growth because before I know it my children will be grown and S. and I will be empty nesters and I don't want us to wake up one morning and say, "Now what do we do with the rest of our lives?"

Wordless Wednesday

2011-02-09T10:45:00.002-05:00

(taken by one of the cousins)

It's still snowing

2011-02-07T14:43:00.005-05:00

Yes, we're still under a blanket of the white stuff up here. Not that it's really any surprise to anyone but by February I am starting to tire of the stuff or, most likely, the temperatures needed to sustain it. We have been in a deep freeze since New Years. Skiing, as you may have gathered from previous posts, is less of a pass time than a religion for our family so it begins to lose some of its luster after day 30 or so. This past Saturday I was coerced into a snow shoe with friends which I agreed to on the condition that it be a "social" outing rather than a competitive "who can run to the top and back down again first" sort of thing. It was the former, I am happy to report and I was even able to stop and take a few photos along the way. The quality isn't great as I didn't have my real camera with me but the iPhone at least gives you a sense of how gorgeous it was to be out in the woods catching up with friends and giving two happy dogs some exercise.

Sunday was a tough day for all three boys with disappointing finishes in all of their races but as I keep telling myself, learning to handle disappointment is going to help them throughout their lives. Hockey play offs continue for our goalie and (hopefully) after this round the team, like the Toronto Maple Leafs, can hang up their skates and dream about better luck next year.

Super Bowl Sunday was celebrated with family and my sister out did herself with the menu as requested by my boys. We dined on mini cocktail wieners in bbq sauce, an assortment of sushi including spicy tuna rolls and sashimi, New England Clam Chowder and then homemade pizza on a Pillsbury croissant crust followed by apple pie and ice cream for dessert. It was quite the party.

I've been hearing about quite a bit of drama in other people's lives lately and mine, in comparison, seems terribly mundane. No long lost loves reappearing on the scene, no family show downs, no marital implosions or offspring explosions. And as I watched, in morbid fascination, that "car wreck on the side of the road and I can't turn away" reality TV series, Toddlers in Tiaras with the overweight mothers and red neck fathers tarting their 10 year old daughters up like third rate Vegas showgirls, spending thousands of dollars they probably can ill afford on tacky sequinned costumes, I took some comfort in my little mundane world and crawled deeper under the blankets.

More Dispatches

2011-02-02T10:49:00.007-05:00

I know that most of the northeastern and central portion of the continent is finally dealing with what we up have most days so forgive me if I have little sympathy for y'all down south (that includes you, Toronto) Yes, it is Snow Day # 7 or 8 by my count and while most of those did occur before Christmas, it's still another day with the boys at home. But "Snowmagedon" and "Snowpocalypse" Really? Has the world actually come to an end because for the first time in my adult life the Toronto District School Board declared it a Snow Day? I think not. I don't know if it's my age showing or that the world really does take itself way too seriously. In 1993 B.C. (Before Children) my Other Half and I lived in Kennebunkport, Maine for a couple of years and my favourite thing was the build up to a snow day. Those Mainers really know how to make it an event. It would start when the birth of a storm was being tracked either from the Midwest or, horror of all horrors, coming down from Canada. I was teaching so we'd all start making bets on whether school would be open the next day or not and then when our administrator actually made the call (usually when she told us to leave as soon as the last child had been picked up) we'd all smile and rush home to shut off our alarm clocks. My Other Half and I would hunker down with some wine, the dog and cat and lots of wood stacked by the fireplace to watch the local news. The 6 o'clock anchors would be wearing cozy sweaters instead of their usual jacket and ties as if they were going to be spending the night in the studio and the art department would have a field day with the STORM WATCH graphics. Then the cancellations would start rolling across the bottom of the screen - school closures, Weight Watchers meetings cancelled but the best of all was when the B&M Baked Bean factory in Portland would cancel the night or morning shift. Really, it was too dangerous for even those most essential of workers to risk going into work. It made us laugh every time.

Nowadays, everyone, including those bean makers, are far too vital to the economy to even consider staying home because of a little snow. That's why I like it up here, nothing is more important than the kids' safety, so the buses are cancelled at the drop of a snowflake but it's really more because of how important it is to our local economy that they get a few extra days on the slopes. As for me? I couldn't have hightailed it out of the house faster this morning when my Other Half realized that the roads going in the direction of the boat shop were closed and he wasn't going anywhere. I made the boys some Pillsbury Cinnamon buns, kicked them outside to play and left for work. In our town my place of employ, the Cheese Gallery, is considered an essential service and I braved an unplowed street and parking lot to make it in to put the coffee on and get the croissants in the oven. Now the only thing to do is update my facebook status, blog and decide what kind of grilled cheese to make for lunch. My friends who own the shop think I'm a saint for coming in to open the shop on time. Hell, even the bank is closed today. So I not only do I get brownie points at work, I get peace and quiet with no kids fighting over the computer, demanding food and leaving a trail of destruction in their wake throughout the house.

Yes, life isn't so bad up her in the Greater White North. Tomorrow? It's a PD Day but the sun is supposed to shine and the snow will be perfect so the boys and I will hit the slopes. Friday? The entire school will be at Blue Mountain for the Ski Cross event. It's a tough life we lead up here but somebody's got to do it.

Dispatches from a Parallel Universe

2011-01-31T09:15:00.009-05:00

Racing Buddies

Sometimes it feels like we really do live in another world and not just because we have four foot snow drifts surrounding the house and people get around on snowmobiles in town. (I know that doesn't help to dispel any stereotypical images you south of the border may have of the Great White North but where I live it really is true for four months of the year) I feel this way because we inhabit this strange little planet of parents of ski racers. Most of you might be familiar with skiing the way normal people enjoy it where you take a holiday and go to a fabulous resort like Vail or Whistler or even somewhere closer like Killington or Sugar Loaf but we in southern Ontario only have what is geologically known as the Niagara Escarpment to conquer on boards. It is a ridge that runs from Niagara Falls to the top of the Bruce Peninsula between Lake Huron and Georgian Bay and due to the two bodies of water and cold air masses from the Arctic we get a lot of snow dumped on us with great regularity. The height of this ridge you ask? Well, at its peak it is about 900 feet. Yes, that's feet, not metres even though we in Canada converted to the metric system sometime in the 70's but because it sounds even punier in metres we still refer to our mountain in feet. Along the escarpment there is one public ski resort grandly called Blue Mountain and then there are five other places to ski but only if you are a member or guest. These ski hills are private clubs much like a golf or country club. It's great if you were lucky enough to be born into a family that were already members thanks to the foresight of your parents or grandparents and which makes you, as we like to call it, a member of the L.S.P. or Lucky Sperm Club. Otherwise if you want to bypass the long lift lines and various yahoos and yetis careening down the slopes at the public hills you have to pony up quite a swack of cash. My family, as you might have gathered is a member of the L.S.C. on both sides as my Other Half and I met as teenagers at our club. Our children are able to ski four out of seven days a week and as my cousin says, "the first run is really expensive and the rest are all free." We get our money'sworth out of our membership especially now that we live up here and can head over to the hills whenever the school is closed and the roads are open.

But back to the parallel universe. What do we do on these short little hills day after day, week after week, all winter long? Well, once you graduate from the snowplow to french fries and can get on and off the chairlifts by yourself (about age 4 for my boys) you start to race. At age 7 they become Nancy Greeners (named after a famous Canadian skier from the 60's) and they train all weekend and compete four or five times a season. As for the parents, if you aren't a weekend warrior and stuff your middle-aged body into a downhill suit to hurl yourself down a race course trying to recapture your youth then you drive from ski club to ski club with your little racers and stand at the bottom of the hill cheering them on for the 35 seconds or so that it takes to make it through the course. You might even strap on a pair of skis yourself and carry their coats because at these speeds the racers don't want any excess drag on their aerodynamically-designed bodies. They would rather freeze their little patooties off than wear a coat while racing. At age 11 they are allowed to put on downhill suits and subject themselves to the beginnings of low self esteem if they don't have the body of ... well ... of an 11 year old boy. Woe to the kids, boys and girls who have a few pounds of baby fat still clinging to their frames while their friends are all spindly arms and legs.

My Other Half - The Sherpa

The thing about ski racing, unlike hockey or soccer, is that it is all about you. Number One Son is a goalie on his hockey team and he is never as upset about losing a game six - nothing as he is about not placing in the top 10 in a ski race. He can slough off a losing streak because he knows it's not all his fault but when it is just him at the top of the hill and he doesn't beat his time in the second run (they get two chances on the course) he is inconsolable. So I tell myself that this is all character building and that doing both team and individual sports is going to help them later in life and I truly think it will but it doesn't make it any easier when you are trying to comfort a 10 year old who has just fallen halfway down the course and has bruised his ego more than anything else. Or managing the expectations of an 8 year old who is faster than most of the 9 and 19 years olds (his brother included) and is beginning to become one of those cocky kids who you swore yours would never be.

So in this parallel universe that we inhabit from December to March that no one in the world, other than a few hundred other crazy parents understand, where we spend thousands of dollars on equipment that the kids out grown every year and hours on homework trying to keep the kids caught up because of all the school they miss for training and hours consoling disappointed children who don't make it to the Provincial Championships because they had a bad fall in a critical race, it is sometimes hard to remember that outside this bubble other people ski for enjoyment, a few days a year. They go to resorts and enjoy the apres ski as much as the skiing itself and then don' spend their evenings sharpening and waxing six pairs of skis.

I love the fact that my sons are outside getting lots of fresh air and exercise but sometimes I wonder what we are doing this all for. I certainly don't think that ski racer is a viable career path. Most people can't name a single alpine racer except maybe during the Winter Olympics and any sponsorship deals they might get only pay for their equipment. Shaun White is the exception but he is a snowboarder not a ski racer. So why are we doing this again? Well, it is what my husband did as a kid (I, on the other hand, carried coats for the racers in the hopes of getting noticed so I guess that worked since he did marry me) and they will form life long friendships since the kids they hang out with every weekend will, for the most part, grow up and raise their children at the club. There really is a certain comfort and continuity in recognizing the last names of your children's friends. My boys are third and fourth generation members at our club and I know that if they get into trouble someone will recognize their names and tell me about it. This gives me that omnipotent parental power which freaks every kid out when we know what they have bee

n up to practically before they do it.

Number Two Son waiting for his turn

So despite the crazed mothers who let their kids miss far too much school so that they can get the edge over their competitors and the gear head fathers who buy their 8 year old the latest and greatest equipment and are found waxing skis at the top of the hill even though it won't make a hundredth of a second difference in a 50 pound kid's time, I will continue to support my boys as long as they want to do this, as long as they are having fun and making friends and learning those life lessons. I will be at the bottom of the hill to wipe away the tears and high five them after a great run and I will toast them with a very large glass of wine whether they make the podium or finish dead last 'cause in any universe, parallel or otherwise, that's what good parents do.

Does anyone know how to be in three places at once?

2011-01-28T08:00:00.005-05:00

Here are a few of the reasons that I will neither be blogging or reading for the next few days. These aren't excuses, just a snapshot of my life right now which I know so many of you will understand and raise your glass of wine in solidarity with me as mothers of far too active, but not over-programmed boys. There is no such thing as over programming of boys since if you dare to let them sit around too long, much like over-ripe fruit, they start to stink and attract flies.

Friday - boys have already left for the ski hill with my Other Half. Numbers Two and Three are training and Number One has a race. Then we get home in time to tune skis for tomorrow's races while Number One is at the arena for hockey practice.

Saturday - Number Two and I go to one hill for a race while Numbers One & Three go to our club for training. All reconvene at the end of the day to tune skis (again), take Number One skating with his ski team, Number Three has a party and then we dump them all with my sister so my Other Half & I can enjoy a rare kid-free party at friends!

Sunday - Number Three goes to another club for a race, then all are back to our club for the afternoon and all race, on three different courses on three different hills which requires the two of us to be in three places at once. The upside of this is that the dog finally gets a decent walk from one hill to another. Then Number Three has another party and Number One has hockey practice and a relief map of Alberta showing the mountains and plains made out of dough to finish.

Love winter but can't wait to be able to sleep in past 7am sometime in April.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Sort of Stuck in a Rut - Part Two

2011-01-24T16:28:00.011-05:00

I'm glad I spilled my January blahs all over this blog last week. It helped and I have made some headway, on the list, at least. I got the kids to move the woodpile so we can get at it more easily which means we can make a fire in hopes that we might sit and relax in front of one someday. Of course, I had to bribe them but I wasn't going to make them go back to school after their dentist appointment anyway. And today I cleaned out the dry sink in the kitchen which used to be the arts and craft cupboard but now that the boys aren't really into crafts it holds paper and stuff for school projects. Great timing as Number One Son has a big project due in two days (guess all that time off school for skiing and volleyball finally caught up with him) I also organized the shelves by my desk and it only took two trips to the hardware store. At first I thought I could attach shelves inside the old cabinet but mismeasured, of course and had to take everything back. But while there the second time I found stackable shelves meant for shoes and decided they would work in the cabinet just as well. They only had two and I might need a couple more but assembling them was a heck of a lot easier than trying to drill holes for shelves in a space that's hard to access since it is in a corner behind my desk. It's not perfect but a whole lot better than before and I've got a big basket of electronic odds and sods shoved underneath where no one can see or get at it so I'll probably forget what's there. Sorry, once again I forgot to take before and after photos so you'll have to trust me on all this.

I did go snow shoeing on Saturday and skied albeit, briefly as the temperatures have been sub-Arctic for the past four days. But the temperatures are supposed to be returning to a more normal range for us in the Great White North which means I have no excuse not to get out riding my horse and walking the dog. But this week is a short one as Thursday is my Other Half's birthday and I have booked us off to ski or shoe shoe in the morning and then massages at the Scandinave Spa in the afternoon! My in-laws are coming up to take the whole family out for dinner that night meaning I won't even have to cook and then we are all skiing together on Friday. So, as January comes to a close, things are looking up. But I am going to keep working on the To Do List which, if I post it for all to see, might have a better chance of getting done by spring.

Next up:

Replace the desk in the upstairs hall with the bookshelf from Griffen's room. (He doesn't need a desk)
Put up the shelves and hang the TV in the basement.
Print out pictures and put them in the frames I bought for the basement
Put up shelves in Ben's room.
Get some regular exercise - snow shoe every weekend, walk River daily, Yoga or Pilates
Purge cookbooks and get recipes on computer organized
Hang a light over my desk (a cool one like these)
Start putting together yearly photo albums and get them printed (this is so easy and cheap now, there's no excuse not to. I've already set aside the best photos from 2010)

Still Stuck in a Rut - Part One

2011-01-20T13:01:00.007-05:00

I have no passion, no goal, no bucket list. I react to life, I am not proactive. I organize and schedule and arrange my families lives but I do nothing of my own. My husband followed his passion and we moved here. I work with friends who followed their passions and started a cheese shop but I have done none of this myself. I have a horse but I can't muster the passion to ride him very often because it take times away from my family. I ski but it gets boring very quickly. I don't exercise regularly. I cook but in spurts. We don't entertain. I don't have To Do Lists which I can tackle around the house although there are a million things that I could be doing. I know I feel better when I do try to get something done but I can't kick start myself into doing anything. I went snow shoeing and felt great, once. I don't walk the dog, I don't volunteer. I eat, I watch TV, I barely even read anymore. I haven't been blogging and when I do, truly, no one is reading.

I know its January and this is when I usually feel this way but I don't even suffer from great bouts of depression that might require counselling. I don't have dramatic breakdowns or spectacular meltdowns. I fight with my kids, yell at them and make myself and them promises every day that it won't happen again. And it does, day after day. And they are not bad kids, they are so good. Good at school, good in sports but I can't even be passionate about that, pushing them to do better, being one of those parents who expects their kids to make it to the Olympics.

I love my husband and we do experience passion together every once in a while which I know is normal for two people who have been together for over 25 years, I think we do okay in that department.

I love design, reading about what other people are doing on a shoe string, seeing pictures of what a difference a can of white paint can make. I hate the clutter in my house. I hate the bathrooms. I want room for my books where I can see them. I hate that we started fixing up the basement for the boys and then stopped and I haven't finished because my husband has no time and I can't seem to do it myself.

I need to make a list for each week and do at least one thing on it. So here goes:

Clean out the dry sink
Organize the shelves by my desk so I can get at them
Replace the desk in the upstairs hall with the bookshelf from Griffen's room. (He doesn't need a desk)
Put up the shelves and hang the TV in the basement.
Print out pictures and put them in the frames I bought for the basement
Put up shelves in Ben's room.
Move the woodpile (get kids to help)

This is the hard part

2011-01-19T12:33:00.005-05:00

My father called this morning to tell me about a conversation he had had with Number Two Son yesterday. My Dad and Number Two have a very special bond and therefore he has been privy to many secrets but this was one he felt he had to share and break the grandparent/grandson confidence. Of course, it was something I already knew about all too well. Number Two has been bullied by the same child since we moved here four years ago. It seems to ebb and flow but we have already had one conversation this year with the teacher which resulted in all the Grade Five boys having a meeting with the teacher to talk about the situation. The school has a very strict anti-bullying policy and they spend alot of time discussing the issue. But there is a real herd mentality amongst these Millennium babies, one that we have not experienced with our older son's group. Number Two and his friends are very aware of what and who is cool, they worry about clothes and hair and what they are doing and how they look doing it. They are all on facebook and because I monitor our son's friends closely I have already had to intervene in one on-line relationship with a girl who he sees only on weekends at the ski hill but who had invented an entire relationship with him including multiple break-ups and reconciliations, all posted on her Wall.

The bullying at school takes the form of teasing and put downs said to other kids about my son. But it has escalated to spitting on clothes such as his sweatshirt and laughing at him when he unknowingly puts it on. Number Two cares deeply about what other people think (don't we all?) and although I have tried to tell tell him that he is smart, cute and good at so many things, only what his peers say really matters at age 10. The herd mentality rears its ugly head and everyone in the class would rather go along with the bullying than risk being singled out themselves, my son included.

We are having another meeting with his teacher who unfortunately Number Two does not seem to like very much and I have talked to one of the Behavioural Specialists at the school who is a close friend who I thought he might be willing to talk to. Now I wonder whether I should call the parent of the bully whom I know (it is a very small town, of course) and ask her if she has heard anything about what's going on from her son? Will that backfire in my face? It might. Would I want to know if one of my sons was a bully? Yes, but having tried this route with another parent about an issue with another child, I know how different one's perspective can be regarding their own child. No one wants to think that their son or daughter is anything other than a kind and caring person. I don't believe that these kids are bad, they are just behaving in a very Lord of the Flies way. A leader emerges from the group and whether he or she guides the group in a positive or negative way determines what happens to characters like "Piggy."

I want my son to know we are doing something to help him but I also know know he is super sensitive and I want him to be able to stand up for himself and not care quite so much about what other people say and do. I have never been an over-protective mother, I like my kids to figure stuff out for themselves and learn the skills they will need to survive in life. But I hate seeing any one of them being hurt.

Grandfather of the Year

2011-01-16T12:36:00.008-05:00

Yes, I know we are only two weeks into 2011 but I would like to nominate my Dad for the Grandfather of the Year Award right now because I don't think there is anyone out there who will top him.

Thank god for my Dad. I have always know that he was special to me and the boys and to my Other Half but this weekend he went above and beyond the call of duty. He is a grandfather extraordinaire.

It all started on Wednesday night at about 10:30pm as I was talking to my Other Half. He was staying in the city for 10 days during the boat show and I was about turn out the lights when I heard something. I hung up abruptly and ran out to find Number Three Son emptying the contents of his stomach somewhere between the hall and the bathroom. He had tried to make it to the toilet, he really did, but there was no point in getting there now since we'd have to wade through his dinner of spaghetti and meat sauce which now coated every surface. I lifted him right into the tub and went in search of my decontamination kit. Set him back into bed with a bucket and towel nearby and went in search of stray bits of pasta which had somehow found their was into every corner of the upstairs landing, coupled with bits of tomato and peppers. I may never eat Italian again.

The poor guys threw up every hour that night even though there was nothing left in him by 1am. He is such a trouper - just rolls over to be sick then rolls back to sleep. In the morning I settled him with the bucket and towels in my bed to watch TV and got Number Two Son up for school expecting a fight as Number One was staying at a friend's house and would be missing school to ski for three days while training for a race. But Number Two surprised me and got up and ate a little breakfast then, while I was checking on his brother, I heard him say, "Mum, I'm going to be sick." And so it began. They were both down for the count. I kept them separated at first but then I was going crazy running up and down the stairs so I gave up and put them both in my bed with their buckets. Number Three was exhausted but over the vomiting. Number Two continued and they both had it coming out both ends at one point (and we wonder why people shake their heads at the whole "Mommy Blogger" phenomenon?) I continued to load and unload the washing machine all day and scoured every surface the boys had come into contact with.

By Thursday night both had calmed down and I actually got a good night sleep. Friday morning everyone (sans Number One who I had told to stay put at his friend's so as not to enter the Plague House) was up and seemed to be okay. I tried to convince them to stay at home but as it was a P.D. Day there was no way they were going to miss out on skiing. We headed to the hill and as I ran back and forth between race courses we seemed to be back on track until it was time to go home. The boys (Two & Three) wanted to go to their grandfather's house to hang out while I went to a memorial service for a friend's father, Number One was still AWOL and apparently going paint balling. So we headed to my Dad's where I decided to have a bath and relax with a copy of People magazine. About 20 minutes later I knew something was wrong. I had openly defied the gods and said, whenever anyone asked how I was doing, "I'm a mother, I don't get sick."

I left my Dad in charge and made a dash for home where the rest of the night disappeared in a haze of fevered runs to the bathroom. The worst part about hanging over the toilet in this situation is you can't even make any promises that you'll never drink again. And no one deserves this after spending 24 hours cleaning up after sick kids.

But back to my Dad, as my sister said, "He woke up Saturday morning with purpose." He had the three boys Friday night, got them up and to the ski hill the next day, took them their lunch, cheered Number Two on from the bottom of the race course, took Number Three over to a friend's for a play date, came home and helped Number One sharpen and wax his skis. Brought me ginger ale and magazines and kept them for a second night.

But to top it all off, Number Two decided to sleep over at a friend's house and in the middle of the night felt sick again and ended up being driven to my Dad's. As the mother who took him home said, "Waking anyone up in the middle of the night to bring home their child is bad enough but bringing him home to his 70 year old grandfather's? Let's just say, if it was anyone other than your Dad he would have had to tough it out." So my Dad continued on, got the other two up this morning and to the hill in time for Number One Son's race, drove number Two home to me and then will go back to the hill in time to get Number One to his hockey game this afternoon.

Late tonight their father will be home and I'm not sure whether I will tell him what has been going on (he still doesn't read this) because I know he will feel so guilty for being away through it all. There aren't very many women I know who can call on their fathers for this kind of support. Last weekend he drove three hours to watch Number One's hockey game and standing at the bottom of a ski hill to watch a 45 second race is tough on him in particular as he has Peripheral Neuropathy which is an incredibly painful condition and makes walking and standing hell. The physical pain is bad enough but my Dad climbed Everest and wrote a book and gives speeches about his experience so it is even harder on him to admit that he is becoming more and more disabled by it.

My Mum, who is also wonderful but lives an hour and a half away would have come to help but would probably have thrown up her hands at the ski/hockey schedule and said they should all just stay home and watch TV. (That's one of the reasons why I never excelled in competitive sports. Well, that and lack of talent.)

So I hope we are through the worst of this bug and that my Other Half and Number One Son won't succumb. I have disinfected, laundered and even thrown out some clothes which I couldn't bear to put in the wash. We are normally a very healthy family, my boys never miss school because they are sick. My only wish after all this is that my Dad doesn't get hit with it but he swears he hasn't thrown up since his fraternity days in the early 1960's.

Maybe I just need to shake things up a bit

2011-01-13T14:54:00.006-05:00

In between loads of laundry and emptying barf buckets for Numbers Two and Three Sons I took a moment to wander over to Lulu's blog which I have only recently discovered. It is so pretty and stylish but what I like most about it is the way she writes. Literally. She writes sort of in a stream of consciousness that runs down the page like a waterfall. The way it looks make you take notice and the words she uses to describe her addiction to paint or the January blahs is wonderful.

So maybe I need to shake things up over here. I have mostly been posting photos and haven't sat down to write anything lately. Well, to be honest, I haven't written much since last summer. I was beginning to fear the blogging muse had left the building permanently but maybe it just checked out for a while to give me time to think about what I want to do with this space. I have been reading more design blogs lately and still visit my old favourites - Harried Mom, Kyran at her new spot, Planting Dandelions, as well as Nesting Place and Hooked on Houses, to name just a few.

But maybe the way to go is the stream of consciousness method, sort of like Random Tuesday every day. Most of the creative writing books and classes I have read and taken advise you to sit down and just write. Every day. Whatever pops into your head. I have a lot less time these days. Hockey, volleyball, ski and boat show seasons are in full swing which means I'm on my own running from school to rink to hill at least four days a week. And I am working two days a week from 10am to 6pm. My Other Half is away and while my Dad is a Super Hero when it comes to looking after his grandsons my biggest fear is that one of them will be left somewhere, waiting to be picked up and I will have forgotten to put him on the schedule. I now have four different calendars going. One on the fridge, one at my desk, one on my phone and another on my computer. Overkill? Perhaps, but it is the only way to keep all the balls in the air.

So rather than trying to sit down and plan out a post and then abandon it halfway through because it's not going the way I think it should, I will just write. And I'll still post pictures and hockey game scores and ski race results, in case anyone is interested.

A New Years Resolution (sort of)

2011-01-07T08:36:00.007-05:00

My Dad and the Group of Seven

I know I have been a terrible blogger these last few months and despite my few and far between postings I still managed to have finally made it up and over 100 followers, a personal goal of mine set a while ago after hovering at 99 for what seemed like years.

And while I am not making any promises about regular postings, I will attempt to be more reliable for those who do stop by every once in a while - in between getting kids to the ski hill, hockey rink and work during these cold, dark days of winter while my husband is away hitting the boat show circuit across the Northeast.

So, in the interests of bringing a little sunshine into everyone's day here are a few photos from our family trip to Naples, FL for Christmas. It was a special one organized by my Dad and the first time all seven cousins had been together since the youngest was born a year and a half ago. We lucked out on the weather, it warmed up the day we arrived stayed that way until we left.

The whole famdamily

Snorkelling at John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park (not John Mellencamp, as I kept referring to it) in Key Largo (I hope my brother will send me more of his underwater photos, especially the one of the kids chasing a 5 foot Black Tipped Reef Shark!

They came to bury PJ and to praise him.

Number Two Son spent hours practising skim boarding

(Here he has lost the board)

They kayak and yak, yaked.

They were the Alligator Hunters

(100's of them were out soaking up the rays after the cold weather)

They went in the Gulf which was not very warm, even by Canadian standards.

More photos to follow one of these days.

We're Off - from Snow to Sand

2010-12-16T06:43:00.006-05:00

It feels very strange that a week before Christmas I do not have stashes of presents hidden throughout the house. I have resisted the temptation to put stocking stuffers in the grocery cart and I have wrapped a grand total of five presents, three for teachers and two for my mother. One more sleep and we are off to the sunny and hopefully warmer south, although with the weather very, very "White Christmas" here, anything will be an improvement. I can't say how secretly happy I am that our snowblower wouldn't start when we got it out of the garage for it's first blow of the year and there has been no time to get it fixed. Luckily our neighbour has a son in the business and I am able to get in and out of our drive with ease. My pioneer woman spirit only extends so far and digging the wood pile out to keep the fire going on the fifth Snow Day so far as well as packing down a path with my snow shoes for the dog to be able to get out and do his thing is about it right now.

We did put the tree up two weeks ago and I have enjoyed it. On Monday Number Two and Three Sons and I sat in front of it most of the day watching movies and making crafts. We baked, well actually we made Candy Cane Bark which is technically not baking but is the most delicious thing ever. And when the power went out at 8 o'clock we lit candles and put another log on and read Christmas stories from Laura Ingalls Wilder. That was a Christmas miracle in our house and as the wind howled outside the boys and I felt like we were living in the Little House in the Big Woods, cosy and warm by the fire. Of course at midnight when the lights all came blazing back on I was more than happy to move the two perpetual motion machines out of my bed and back into theirs.

Number One Son and my Other Half have been away for the week at Mont Tremblant, Quebec for some father/son time and it has given our eldest a chance to be a little more independent away from his brothers. Something I hope will help him as I encourage him to do a French Exchange programme next year for two months. He would go to France or Switzerland in the spring of 2012 and we would have a student here next September/October. At first I thought Grade 8 was a little young but the reasoning is that the students won't miss as much academically as they would in high school and also they won't be as inclined to go over and party at age 13 and 14 (I hope). It would be a fantastic opportunity for him and something that is very near and dear to my heart. Language is my thing and most days I feel like I have very little influence over my sports-loving, brother-bashing, video-gaming sons. Number One is the reader in the family like me and he is already quite good in French after spending the first four years of school in French immersion. I would love for him to really solidify that skill and quiet frankly, we would all love to be able to go over and visit him, hopefully in the Alps, for Spring Break 2012.

But for now off we go to a place where instead of snow there will be sand and the palm trees are covered in millions of white lights. They say nobody does Christmas quite like Naples, Florida so I promise to take lots of pictures. Have a wonderful holiday everyone.

My question is what do we do with the rest of the white stuff for the next three months?

2010-12-09T09:30:00.001-05:00

I am torn

2010-11-30T07:37:00.001-05:00

I am not sure what to do about Christmas this year. Number One Son and his father will be leaving to go to Mont Tremblant, Quebec to ski with his team on December 12th and then they join Numbers Two, Three and I in Naples, FL on December 19th. We will be leaving on the 17th to spend our first Christmas down south with my Dad, my brother and sister and their families. We will be home on Boxing Day, the 26th in time for the boys to begin their season of ski racing but the question is, do we put up the tree?

We will have so little time before we leave and then, of course, we will come home to a half dead tree with needles every where and I will be the one who has to put everything away and clean it all up. For what? My Other Half was at a trade show this weekend and so we could put it up this week but then the weekend after we are staying at my Mum's to celebrate Christmas with her, four days later we head south. Am I a Grinch for not wanting to go through the hassle?

Number Two with Santa's Marching Band - Christmas 2000

Yesterday Number Two Son found his Santa hat to wear to school and started to rip through all the boxes to find his favourite Playmobile Santa sleigh and reindeer. I lost it when I saw the mess but I know how much he has always loved playing with the decorations. And on Saturday night I went to a party at a home that was decked to the halls and that coupled with some snow on the ground I know I can't not get out the Santas and the wreaths. And even though there might be a few needles to sweep up when we get home I think we will all appreciate coming home to enjoy Christmas for another week or so, at least until after New Years.

Winter's Hush

2010-11-27T09:18:00.003-05:00

My world is white this morning.

The first snow fell over night and everything is quiet outside.

The howling wind that brought the storm has calmed and the birds are huddled around the feeder.

The dog stepped out for his morning constitutional and made it as far as the back porch before noticing the world had changed. He put his nose down and snuffled under the blanket of snow before leaping off to run around in circles like a puppy.

Soon we will find mitts and hats and snowpants. Put on boots and join him for snow angels

Wabi Sabi

2010-11-23T09:12:00.000-05:00

In yet another case of I'm still thinking while someone else is actually doing, I had been pondering a post about the Japanese aesthetic of Wabi Sabi which means to find perfection in imperfection which has been my mantra ever since a friend who lived in Japan for four years gave me a book about it. Of course just as I was mulling over whether to take my own photos to illustrate the post or just go on line and find someone else's I came across this Design Sponge post which explains and has the perfect (no pun intended) photos of what Wabi Sabi means. I found another post explaining Wabi Sabi more as a philosophy of living rather than just one of decorating. I love the idea that, "Wabi-sabi is underplayed and modest, the kind of quiet, undeclared beauty that waits patiently to be discovered. It's a fragmentary glimpse: the branch representing the entire tree, shoji screens filtering the sun, the moon 90 percent obscured behind a ribbon of cloud. It's a richly mellow beauty that's striking but not obvious, that you can imagine having around you for a long, long time - Katherine Hepburn versus Marilyn Monroe." I always wanted to be Katherine Hepburn, elegant in trousers and a simple white man's shirt while my next door neighbour styled herself after Marilyn Monroe.

In my life I have evolved from a teenage girl who wanted nothing more than a room that "matched" to become someone who embraces the bits and pieces my Other Half and I have collected over the 22 years we have been creating home together. But I certainly didn't appreciate this growing up in a 150 year old farmhouse decorated with antique pine furniture and my mother's own unique style. In short - nothing matched. When I was 13 I went to school in the city and met a girl who became a life long friend and spent most of my time at her house which, of course, matched. Her mother had a wonderful style, formal yet comfortable. She used bright colours and had fabrics on the couches which had names like chintz and toile. Their kitchen was white and in my eyes, modern. Ours was dark and country. While my parents collected unknown (at the time) Inuit sculpture and native art, my friend's mother adorned her walls with up-and-coming and even famous artists.

In hindsight, of course, I can now appreciate what my parents created at our farm - a warm and inviting place with wonderful pieces of furniture scarred and battered with use by my brother, sister and I as well as many families before us. I have many of those pieces in my house now and they all have a story to tell. My own decorating philosophy, such as it is, begins with, " Is something useful and does it belong?" Meaning, not that it matches but because it looks at home. Of course all of this lofty discussion takes place in my head and isn't always easily translated to my home because of either time or money and I certainly have made some mistakes since I "decorated" our first apartment 22 years ago. We have gone from city to country, apartment to semi-detached house to bungalow to building a timber frame house in the country back to city and now Cape Cod-style in a small town. The first couch we bought was a high backed, over-stuffed, chintz-covered monster that hasn't fit anywhere after we sold the timber frame house. It will finally be liberated from our storage locker and moved to the office of our new workshop which has knotty pine walls and appropriately enough used to be the home of a timber frame builder.

We are currently in the process of transforming the basement playroom into a "Boy Cave" for our sons, namely the eldest who when asked why he wasn't inviting his friends over much replied, "because downstairs is a dump." At first I wanted to scream, "Well then why don't you guys clean up more often?" but then I saw his point. When we moved from the city the boys were 5, 7 and 9 and it was full of toys that now lie forgotten for the most part and the room centres around the TV and video games. So we bit the bullet and bought a giant sectional couch, fake leather that is easily wiped off and the cushions which are permanently attached so that mac & cheese can't be hidden under them. Now all five of us can sit comfortably and watch a movie together and the boys can have friends over and not be embarrassed. We have also moved their rooms around and I have given them free rein in their decor. So has any of my own personal aesthetic rubbed off on them? I'll let you decide.

Number One Son's Room (still under renovation)

Number Three Son's Room

Number Two Son's Room

P.S. I have no idea why the typeface decided to change, I guess maybe that's just another example of Wabi Sabi.

2010-11-16T07:23:00.004-05:00

“To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived - that is to have succeeded.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life seems to be a challenge lately and continuing to believe that what I do everyday is important is harder and harder. Boys constantly bickering and fighting, my continual nagging to make the bed, set the table, do homework, feed the dog ... it goes on and on and there never seems to be anything positive in return. In the end I want them to grow up to be three good men like their father, but not necessarily great. The world is full of too many men whom society judges great but who cheat on their wives, abandon their children and leave a trail of friends behind all for power, money or fame.

So I will continue to lie with my children before they go to sleep, listen to their fears and dreams and put up with their noise and fights, tend my family and my friends and hope that I will in some way have succeeded - at least by Emerson's very fine definition.

Highway of Heroes

2010-11-12T11:33:00.002-05:00

This week was, of course, when we do a lot of looking back. My kids’ school does an incredible job of bringing Remembrance Day to life. The assembly is poignant, relevant and brings me to tears every year. My eldest son’s Grade 7 class sang The Trews “Highway of Heroes” song while this video was shown. The interesting thing is that all the talk of war and peace seems to touch my children much more profoundly that it ever did me when I was their age. I was lucky to not know any family members who when to war and when I was growing up in the 70′s and 80′s in Canada, other than our peacekeeping forces, our country was not sending soldiers off to fight overseas. Today, it is quite different. All too frequently there is another ramp ceremony broadcast from Afghanistan and footage of the procession of cars and hearses along the Highway of Heroes (Hwy 401 in Ontario), a road I have travelled more times than I can count, back and forth from Montreal where I went to university and on weekends down to my husband's cottage in the Thousand Islands. I cannot imagine what it would be like to travel it as the parent of a fallen soldier. We live near a base and my boys actually ran their cross country race through it’s beautiful woods and fields where other mother's sons train to be sent to Afghanistan. Remembrance Day is far more relevant and real to my children than it ever was to me and while I am sorry that our world doesn’t seem to have changed since the “Great War” or any other since I am glad that my boys understand why we must never forget the sacrifices that others have made so we can live.

What a Weekend

2010-11-08T10:06:00.011-05:00

It's not often that I get to report on a weekend full of fun with other grown ups but this one was all that and more. I didn't see the boys from Friday morning when they left for school until Sunday at about 11am when we picked them up at my Mum's. In fact I had Thursday off as well when we we headed up to close the cottage for the day.

Yes, that is snow on the ground

Now I know that driving five hours to pull boats out of the water and to bait mouse traps isn't everyone's idea of fun but I didn't have to make lunch or dinner so that counts for something, doesn't it? And no matter what you are doing what a difference having some time off makes in how you deal with your children. And the best part is that now that they are older there is hardly any prep involved in me getting away. Of course leaving my incredible Other Half at the helm helps too. He has never been one of those fathers. You know the ones who babysit their kids, who need detailed instructions on the care and feeding of their own offspring. The man I chose to marry and bear children for (and I take all the credit for my very wise choice) doesn't need to be told or even reminded to pick up his kids at school or make sure they don't eat only Halloween candy for every meal. I didn't make up meals or post instructions on the fridge for anything, not even the phone number of our local pizza place. I just had a shower, straightened my hair, packed my city clothes and walked out the door. I think it's partly because I definitely don't have any control issues and also because my partner is more organized than I will ever be. Here he is, right in the middle of a major expansion of the business, moving the shop to a new location next week, sourcing new suppliers and arranging for the necessary improvements to be made in, what will officially be, a plant not a workshop anymore. All the while keeping up with hockey, volleyball and dry land training schedules, homework and bloody Grade 5 Ancient Civilizations projects. He is Mr. Super Mom.

As for me, I hit the Starbucks drive through by 3pm on Friday afternoon and was on my way to the big city for a girl's dinner with my high school posse. We met downtown at a great Moroccan restaurant and ate and drank, laughed and talked until it was time for them to put the chairs up on the tables. Afterwards Diana and I headed back to her house where her hubby had thoughtfully chilled a bottle of Pino Grigio for us before he went to bed. We talked and laughed some more and I fell into bed feeling reconnected with friends who I don't get to see often enough but when we do get together it is as if no time has passed.

Saturday morning I got up, popped an Advil to ward off the post Pino head ache and hung out with the family for a while catching up on their lives until I headed off to IKEA. Normally the thought of tackling the Swedish super store on a Saturday would be my idea of hell but alone with no particular timetable I wandered, took pictures and got ideas for the "boy cave" we are transforming the basement playroom into. After a successful couple of hours I called my best friend and we met for lunch, gorged myself on Pad Thai and then went off to meet my Other Half to drive out to the suburbs see his parents. My father-in-law had a double bypass and a valve replacement two weeks ago and is now home and doing well. The pig's valve is a source of great amusement to the boys who keep asking whether Grandpa can now oink or if he still eats bacon. But both my in-laws while tired, looked much better than they had in the very tense weeks and days leading up to the surgery. We had dinner and motored back into the city to check in at our hotel. We were going to stay with our friends again but we decided to treat ourselves and not sleep on their basement hide-a-bed. One night on it was enough for my 44 year old back.

Dressed, refreshed and ready to party we hopped in a cab and headed back uptown to the "Twisted Kilt" for my sister's 40th birthday party. Those of you who might have read my previous post will know that my sister is a very special person and as a result the pub was packed with friends and family. We had a great time but unfortunately I left my camera back at the hotel and so there is no photographic evidence of the evening's festivities. But trust me on this, it was a great party. And when we did get back to our room we realized that since it was the night to "fall" back we had gained an extra hour of sleep with no children to spoil the illusion. Perfect timing on my party-planning brother-in-law's part.

Sunday morning was a lazy one until we looked at our watches over our favourite greasy spoon bacon and eggs and realized that even with the extra hour our reprieve was over. We had to haul it to my Mum's to pick up the boys and get Number One Son home for hockey practise while Number Two Son had a month's worth of work to do on his Ancient Civilization project which is due this week. So Cinderella left the ball, kicked off her high-heeled boots, slipped back into her Blundstones and went home to star as the sous chef in a video of Number Two Procrastinator making spicy Mayan hot chocolate.

But after a little break even spilled hot chocolate on a white dress shirt didn't get to me like it would have 48 hours ago. The boys had quality time with their grandmother and I had quality time with friends and my so-close-to-perfect Other Half.

Note to Self - Do it more often and everyone will be happier.

2010-11-03T17:16:00.002-04:00

Top Ten Reasons Why You are So Special and
(after 40 years) I'm Glad You're My Sister

You always listen to me no matter if I'm crying, ranting or just feeling sorry for myself.
You make friends where ever you are whether it's in a bar or at the counter of a cheese shop. ('cause you never know who you might be talking to – dotcom millionaire or local wino)
You are passionate about whatever you are doing and make everyone around you care too.
You always were our grandfather's favourite and he must have recognized something early on that I have only come to see with the wisdom of age.
You get my boys. Each one of their quirks and eccentricities and you bring out the best in each one of them.
You will spontaneously sing "It's a Long Road to Freedom" with me.
You back me up when I buy yet another pair of boots (aren't we lucky to wear the same size?)
You brought PJ into our lives with joy and determination despite everything you and Paddy went through.
No one (except our brother and you together) makes me laugh more or harder.
You know me better than anyone else. Through Monday morning temper tantrums leaving for Havergal, frat parties at McGill, Christmas parties at the farm, weddings, break ups, babies and in the not-so-distant future, teenagers. You have been there, not necessarily close by, but always at the other end of phone whether I'm drunk dialling, crying or laughing.

Not everyone has the kind of relationship we have, I have been surprised to learn and it might be because we haven't lived under the same roof since 1978. But whatever the reason, I am so glad to have you and your little family close by to celebrate with on special occasions like this and to just hang out, spending time together. Watching PJ take his first steps between his cousins, cheering on whatever sporting endeavour the boys are participating in and every once in a while, just the two of us. And I hope we can fine sometime to do just that, - before you turn 41.

Happy 40^th Boo. I love you.

Twas the night before All Hallo's Eve

2010-11-01T13:43:00.006-04:00

Halloween seemed a little discombobulated this year. Maybe it was because it was on a Sunday or the fact that it was really cold but we didn't even get out the decorations until the day of and only got so far as to put a few cobwebs up by the front door. In contrast to our old street in the city where we'd get over a hundred trick or treaters, here on our quiet cul de sac of eight houses only my cousin's son and a couple of neighbours rang the bell. The kids, mine included, are smart enough to know you get way more candy per street if you go to the high density neighbourhoods.

But we adults did get out the night before for a few treats and lots of fun as witnessed by photos below.

Breakfast at Tiffany's meets Bonnie while Clyde was getting them drinks

(Apologies to Audrey and Faye)

Lisbeth Salader, Holly Golightly, an Angel and a Witch

Not sure who is Madder? The Hatter or the Devil.

Barbie & Ken were the perfect hosts once they came out of their boxes.

Everyone was getting into the spirit including Number Two Son and

his cousin who modelled matching Spiderman costumes.

Finally the big night arrived and the ghosts, ghouls and zombies were out in full force.

The Motley Crew consisted of a Dirtbiker, Zombie Lumberjack, Mini Spiderman, Little Red Riding Hood, an Old Rich Guy, 80's Skier and Zombie Abe Lincoln. I never know what they are going to be until the last minute. Number One Son actually changed from a Hobo to Old Rich Guy about five minutes before we headed out.

The Lumberjack met up with his good buddy Shaun White who found trick or treating while carrying a snowboard a little tiring but at least he was dressed for the frigid temperatures.

I also had a revelation this year while trying to come up with a good couple costume for my Other Half and I - we need to really be in disguise. My wonderful Clark Kentish hubby definitely comes out of his more introverted self when he dons a costume but this year's tweed suit and fedora just wasn't disguise enough for him to let loose like last year's leather biker chaps and tattoo sleeves did. He said he felt too much like himself or at least his old self who used to wear a suit and tie every day.

Lesson learned. Next year there will be make up and/or masks involved.

Muse Still Missing

2010-10-28T09:30:00.005-04:00

So please enjoy these photos which are completely out of order. Why is it so hard to move them around?

The Regional Cross Country Race

Number One Son came in 18th out of all the 12 & 13 year olds, all 145 of them!

Number Three Son came in 22nd out of 240 8 and 9 year olds!!

The oldest group is off

Number Three waiting for the gun in the Reebok Hockey cap that never leaves his head

Of course, I had to get some shots of the spectators while the runners were out of sight in the woods.

One in particular

A great day was had by all

Fall Colours

2010-10-02T09:12:00.003-04:00

Despite the grey skies threatening rain all last weekend the colours were still brilliant in the Park. Here's a few photos.

Going through the creek

Reflections

Cold boat ride

Yes, that's me cutting the cheese

2010-10-01T09:11:00.003-04:00

It's amazing how life can get away from from you when you are not paying attention or you try to do something new. I am helping some friends out one day a week in their new shop, The Cheese Gallery. It's a fantastic place where you can buy a hunk of stinky cheese, sip a cup of tea, have your favourite painting framed or even enjoy a glass of wine with some cheese and crackers. In a town of 1400 people sometime you do have to be all things to all people. So on Tuesdays I can be found behind the counter - yes, "cutting the cheese" (sorry, hanging out with boys does tend to rub off on me) It is great fun, I am learning lots about the cheeses from France, England, as well as our many fine Canadian artisan cheese makers. Of course there is lots of joking about the old Monte Python Sketch and thanks to the wonders of YouTube I can share it with you.

But back to the problem of letting things get away from me. The boys seem to be coping with me not picking them up from school and my wonderful Other Half has rose to the occasion making dinner for us but this week I also had to go down to the city for a day and of course picked up a nasty cold bug and spent yesterday in bed watching "Glee" on demand. Today I am feeling a bit better, still have a pounding headache and won't make it over to the school to help with the Terry Fox Run. But I hope to sleep enough to be able to rally tonight as we have tickets for a Fundraiser and I borrowed a dress just for the occasion which is a big deal in my world. So the laundry has piled up, there's no food in the fridge, I'm hoping the boys have kept up with their homework and the poor dog hasn't been walked in days. How silly of me to have thought every once in a while that I would like to have a "sick" day. As my youngest said last night when he came in to say goodnight to me, "but I thought Mummys didn't get sick." They do but it's rarely worth it.

Still at their beck and call

2010-09-27T17:16:00.004-04:00

When the boys were little I was literally at their beck and call. For years I never seemed to be able to enter REM sleep because their was always a diaper to change or worse, an entire sleeper to be peeled off a cranky baby or a bucket needed beside a nauseous toddler or wet sheets to be changed. During the day it was constant diaper changes, non stop nursing, meal prep and clean up. One day morphed into the next until slowly we came out the other end of babydom and entered preschool world. Now I had a few hours with everyone off at school, time flew by in a haze of errands run without a stroller and quick uninterrupted conversations with friends. The nights were less hectic, I found myself waking up in the morning thinking that something must be wrong, no one had called out for me.

And so now we have moved all too quickly out of those early school years into the era of pre-teen angst and a whole new round of becking and calling. I have more time without them but now it's not as easy to make plans with friends because inevitably someone will need to be taken to the arena or picked up from dry land training or so-and-so wants to sleep over and can we go rent a movie or go to the theatre to meet the gang? It is never ending. I used to call the lists and schedules I left for whichever set of grandparent was babysitting for a few days "The Care & Feeding of the Brothers Grimm" but now it's less care and feeding and more "Chauffeuring and Digital Monitoring"

There's homework and the dreaded school projects. There's hockey practise and football tryouts. And now there's facebook and MSN monitoring. Our eldest doesn't have a cell phone yet and isn't really lobbying for one (although Number Two Son is) but I am starting to think it might not be a bad idea so I don't have to turn up at the arena only to be told he's going home with so-and-so or arriving at school to find no one there because they have all made plans and I'm not in them.

I'm not complaining, I just don't do change very well. Every transition I find myself clinging to the old days of making meals with one in the high chair, one on the floor with all the tupperware out of the cupboard and one playing with Play Doh on the counter. Now it's rushing to get a meal on the table before practise, watching which website they are surfing out of the corner of one eye while I squint with the other to read another permission form for yet another sporting activity. Change is good, change is inevitable but I still don't have to like it.

From the sublime to ridiculous in under three hours

2010-09-18T08:23:00.008-04:00

Summer is over and I just haven't had the blogging muse strike me in a very long time. But this morning I am sitting drinking my second cup of uninterrupted coffee because it's just me and the dog at home. Yes, no boys (they slept over at my Dad's) and my Other Half is off at a much deserved golf weekend with the boys. Did I mention that I had the house to myself last night? I don't think in the three years we have lived here I have been alone in it for more than a few hours. I love being alone. I watched Date Night last week and I loved the scene where Tina Fey's character describes her fantasy of being alone in a quiet hotel room with nobody touching her and drinking a Diet Sprite. I got my fantasy last night.

Alone, lit a fire and opened a bottle of wine, fired up the Kindle and read some of Quinn Cummings essays from Notes from the Underwire. It was perfect. And this morning as I await the return of the mob I have had time to make myself a pot of steel cut oatmeal which takes at least a half an hour and I try to make but never have time to eat, catch up on my favourite blogs and start planning for the arrival of four more children, two mothers and two extra dogs for the night. From the sublime to ridiculous in under three hours.

So back to the reason for my absence from the blogosphere this summer, I think I might have to take a look at what I am doing in this blog, a few others I read have either disappeared or have been reinvented, not sure if I need to do anything as drastic as that but I think something needs to change.

Wordless Wednesday is so easy in the summer

2010-08-11T08:13:00.004-04:00

Life Lessons

2010-07-28T13:11:00.004-04:00

I've been away for a while and I am only back on a temporary basis. Life keeps getting in the way but that's okay for now. I am sure I'll be back with a blogging vengeance in September. Something about back-to-school time. In the words of that Grand & Toy ad, "It's the most wonderful time of the year ..." So for now I will simply post a couple of things I have learned lately.

Always check all your pockets. In the past year we have, as a family lost quite a few things. These things were small and electronic so therefore their value was not directly in proportion to their size. The items were a brand new iPod Nano owned by Number One Son who lost it up at the cottage last summer. We looked everywhere, several times and finally bought him a new one for Christmas. The other thing was my small camera which I was convinced had gone out with the Christmas wrapping paper as the last time I used it was Christmas morning. We replaced that one a couple of weeks later and the replacement was promptly dropped by Number Two Son on the floor of the Alphorn Restaurant so the lens is now permanently jammed.

But back to the Life Lesson learned here. When it came time for me to pack the boys' stuff for camp I dutifully aired out their sleeping bags and even cleaned out their toilet kits and in doing so unzipped all the pockets. What did I find in Number One's kit? His old iPod that he had carefully packed last August. Hmmmm, do you think he ever opened his toothbrush holder either? So now Number Three Son has graduated from Number Two's iPod Classic which was my original to a barely used Nano. Lucky 8 year old that he is.

As for the camera? Well, we headed down to the pier one evening after soccer practise so the boys could cool off and I grabbed a backpack out of the front all closet to throw the towels in and opened one of the six or seven pockets and found ... you guessed it. The missing Christmas camera. So once I get the jammed one fixed we will have two identical Canon Sure Shots. One to take pictures with and one to lose.

Hope everyone is having a great summer, especially all you Asian spammers we bloggers love so much, I've never had so many comments I can't understand.

Raw Food Detox Debrief

2010-06-23T09:30:00.009-04:00

So I made it through the 7 day detox as prescribed by the Raw Divas. And I have to say I am quite proud of myself. I did not slip up once, although I may have jumped the gun on finishing when I ate dinner out with my Other Half and his mother on Saturday night, I think I was supposed to go through to Sunday morning but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to go to my favourite restaurant in town and sit by the water, enjoy a glass of Prosecco and the delicious food.

But I digress, the week started off with major headaches for the first couple of days, probably due to caffeine with drawl more than anything. I don't drink a lot of coffee, a cup or two in the morning but my head was screaming by the afternoon of the first day then it subsided into a dull roar by Day 2 and by Day 3 I was okay. I have to admit I rather enjoyed the "Green Smoothies" for breakfast and am still making them. I blended kale, bananas, strawberries, mango and blueberries with just a wee bit of OJ and they were great. Filled me up and kept me going until lunch.

Lunch was either a bowl of fruit, the easy way out for me as I cut up fruit and have a bowl in the fridge all the time anyways, mostly watermelon, cantaloupe and mango. Or if I was feeling inspired I made a salad of all the veggies I could fit in a bowl. I did miss having dressing on it and found it a little dry so again I added a bit of OJ or one day I pureed strawberries to drizzle over. Not the same as balsamic vinegar but better than nothing. I love fennel so I ate a lot of that and I bought the premixed salad greens as a base. I didn't try to grow my own sprouts or mung beans (yuck) so I didn't get a lot of protein and you aren't supposed to have any oils at all so no nuts or seeds for the 7 days.

As the week went on I found making meals for the boys easier and the biggest thing I learned was that it is possible to make a meal with out grazing through the process. That is my biggest downfall since I tend to eat an entire meal before we even sit down at the table. And I didn't touch bread for the week either, my other weakness. Had my first slice of whole grain toast this morning and it was okay and I had my smoothie as well.

By Friday my waistbands were looser and while I still felt tired by the end of the day I have to admit I felt lighter and not just weight-wise. My whole body felt better, not so puffy in the morning and although bags under my eyes aren't gone I think they may have lightened up from dark purple to more of a lilac hue.

So what else did I learn that I can incorporate into my daily life since I am definitely not a total raw food convert? Well, I think the thing I can do is save my splurges for when they are worth it like when we go out for dinner. There is no point in pigging out on bread and butter at home or eating the kids leftover tuna casserole just because it's there. And when we do go out I will try to skip on the bread basket and concentrate on the meal. I am drinking more water and I am not sure whether I will ever go back to coffee. I tried some decaf this morning and it just didn't do it for me and it's the morning ritual I enjoy more than anything else.

As for the alcohol or lack there of, Friday night I was craving a cold Corona so badly as I sat watching the kids swim but I stuck to my guns and passed, just added another lime to my water. And even missing out on the champagne at book club was okay since I felt fine the next morning instead of slightly hungover and tired from staying up too late which is really the problem these days. I can't function if I go to bed past 11pm anymore. I am realizing that my eating habits are more situational than anything else. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen and just like I tell my kids to get out so they aren't thinking about food from the minute they get home from school, I need to make the meal, get out and go sit on the porch or weed the garden.

More than anything else I know the thing that I got most out of the experience is that I feel like I did something for myself. I didn't necessarily lose a ton of weight but I didn't cheat once and it is the first time I have ever challenged myself to something like that so it's a big deal. It felt good to be in control. My friend who was my phone buddy (and it's good to have someone to call because the Divas emails are pretty generic and not terribly inspiring) when I felt my willpower caving has suggested that it might be something we could do every 6 months or so. Don't know if I 'm that keen but talk to me in January after the Christmas eat-a-thon when my ski pants are digging into my waist and I just might be ready to jump back on the raw food wagon.

Bet the World Cup players don't get to do this

2010-06-22T16:12:00.003-04:00

Number Three on a break-away

Number Two takes the throw in

Then it was down to the pier to cool off

Ahhh ... summer

For My Other Half - Happy Father's Day

2010-06-18T06:44:00.007-04:00

You are the King of Fishermen

You are the best to snuggle up to

You never get tired of reading stories

You've known me since forever

I love you

Raw Day Five

2010-06-17T07:13:00.004-04:00

Can't say I'm feeling better, not hungry just bored and my jaw aches from crunching through all those veggies. No worries that I am turning into become a raw foodie convert, Sunday can't come soon enough. I'll be hitting the Father's Day buffet with a vengence. But on the other hand it has made me more mindful of what I eat and I have created some truly beautiful salads which I hope to continue to do once I am back on the cooking bandwagon. Off to make my green breakfast smoothie. Who knew kale and bananas were such a delicious combo, maybe I should suggest it to Ben & Jerry.

My Fruit Bowl Overfloweth

2010-06-15T07:18:00.008-04:00

Okay, first off a disclaminer. I am not a dieter. I have never counted calories or eaten cabbage or grapefruit for days on end. I love food and cooking but lately I have been feeling like I had to do something to shake things up. I have been feeling awful - no energy, bloated, clothes too tight. I read about the Raw Divas on somewhere and thought, "Hmmm, maybe this is something I can do." I went to the website and signed up for the 7 Day Detox before I really had a chance to talk myself out of it. Then I did what any normal woman would do - I told my best friend she was doing it with me.

So right after I signed on I started getting emails from Tera, not terribly frightening ones but with enough raw food fevour to make me think, "What have I gotten myself into?" But of course the whole idea wasn't just to lose weight or eat nothing but sprouts for a week, it was to challenge myself, to step outside my comfort zone to use a tired phrase.

The detox started with 5 days of prep, just stuff to read and think about, then they dropped the bomb. The first day was a 24 hour fast. Yup, nothing but water for 24 hours. Now for a mother of three not eating for 24 hours is my idea of hell. I still had to prepare all the meals for my family and then watch them eat it. And explain why I was doing it to my boys who use "fat" as the worst insult they can think of. I don't know why but that in itself is a whole other post. So I thought about starting on Monday instead of Sunday since we were at the cottage and that meant the usual huge breakfast of bacon, eggs and sticky buns from our favourite bakery. But I decided that there would never be a perfect time to start, so I just did it. Had a wonderful meal Saturday night and then avoided the kitchen Sunday morning as the bacon was frying. I told my Other Half what I was doing as we got into bed Saturday night but of course he didn't get it and had forgotten by the morning when he called me for breakfast.

The day wasn't so bad, I kept busy cleaning out closets and I did make the boys lunch without too much pain. But then the headaches kicked in. Don't know if it was the lack of caffeine or food but they lasted all day and made me very grouchy. On the plus side I wasn't thinking about my stomach because my head was hurting so much.

So yesterday was day one of raw food eating. I went shopping and bought a full grocery cart of fruits and veggies. Spent nearly as much as I usually do on a regular shop and boy are my crispers jammed and my fruit bowl overflowing. I had a smoothie made of local (yeah!) strawberries, mango and frozen wild blueberries. Then cut up fruit for lunch while watching the two older boys in their regional track and field meet. Luckily for me this year they decided to forego the usual BBQ with hotdogs and chips, instead encouraging the young athletes to pack healthy lunches. About time I say.

I felt pretty good all day, no more headache and by four o'clock when my energy level is usually at its lowest I was fine. For dinner I made pork tenderloin with carrots, cukes and sugar snap peas for the boys dinner and I sat down to an awesome salad. I can't believe I didn't take a picture of it but it had almost everything I had jammed in the crisper and the fruit bowl including mixed greens, cilantro, fennel, oranges, blueberries, pear and a sprinkling of sunflower seeds which I now realize aren't on the detox list. It was gorgeous.

I had a good sleep and woke up this morning somewhat saddened by the fact that my hubby remembered not to make me coffee but I did make one of the Raw Divas' Green Smoothies with kale as a base then blueberries, strawberries, mango and banana and although it started a little brown once I added the blueberries it looked much more appetizing. For lunch I'll try a lettuce wrap.

So, so far so good. I do feel better and they say the dark circles under my eyes will start to disappear. If they do then I'm sold. I don't think I will be a convert to the raw food lifestyle, I love bread, cheese and a good steak too much but it has re-energized my salad making and eating. Plus, as a reward at the end of the week my friend and I are treating ourselves to a dinner at one of Toronto's raw food restaurants. I'll keep you posted on how it all pans out (no pan intended or was used in the writing of this raw food post)

A Long Walk Off a Short Pier

2010-06-11T09:53:00.010-04:00

Yesterday my Number One Son, the 12 year old, headed off with a bunch of friends after school. I didn't actually see him but my neighbour knew where they we going, or so she thought. Turns out after they went downtown to the convenience store, meaning they walked down the hill to the block of shops that constitute the main drag in our little town, they then headed to the pier. (There's a picture of it in the previous post) That's okay, I just would have liked to have known where to look for their bodies when they washed up on shore.

You know the old parental saying, "If Johnny jumped off the bridge, would you?" Well, this bunch of pre-teen boys who all are beginning to suffer from S.T.B.S (Stupid Teenage Boy Syndrome, my diagnosis) all decided to to take a long walk off a short pier. They went swimming with no adults to supervise. Now they will tell you that of the five of them, three almost have their Bronze Medallion and they do but the key word is almost and I don't think for a minute anyone of them could have rescued their buddy if he got in trouble. The pier is about 10 feet off the water and it is great fun to jump off of, it is one of the things I love about living here but I am not ready for my boys to go swimming there on their own yet. But S.T.B.S. kicked in and off they went like a herd of lemmings.

But wait, it gets better. I didn't actually hear about the swimming until this morning. What I did hear about last night was the photographer who took their pictures and asked for their names. Number One Son told me that they were going to be in the paper and I asked, "Why?" "Some guy took our picture and asked for our names." But not our local reporter who comes to every little event around town, no some guy from somewhere else. Great. Okay, I thought, time for a little reality check. I asked him if he thought that was a smart thing to do, give his name to a stranger? "Noooo," he replied. "I guess not. But he only took one of the back of our heads." Well, it turns out that he didn't just get the back of their heads, he also got pictures of them all jumping into the water. Three times so he could get the shot. Apparently one of the boys has his card which I will be tracking down to call and ask him if its his paper's policy to take photos and the names of kids without parental permission.

I am not one of those over-protective parents, I have no trouble signing the release form at school allowing their photo to be taken and even put on the school website. Hell, I have this blog and I put their pictures up all the time. It wouldn't take much for someone to figure out where we live but I choose to believe that most people, whether on-line or in RL, are not pedophiles or stalkers. But still, I want my children to stop and think before they do stuff. Any stuff, from something big like getting into a car with someone who has been drinking to something little like swimming without adult supervision (I now that's not little but, it's all relative) We are entering a whole new universe here at the house of Cid and I have to start thinking one step ahead of my boys. It's not just riding bikes to the store to buy candy, they are stepping further and further out of my control (I choose to believe that at sometime I had control) and I want them to have that independence which is why we live where we do and not in the big city where they wouldn't have been able to do anything on their own until well into their 20's. But there are limits and boundaries and I guess we really have to start talking about them. Number One Son is smart and a little cautious which is a trait I intend to foster but the herd mentality is powerful. This is only the beginning of trying to teach them to think for themselves or at least to think, "What would my mother say about me doing this?" I may not be Catholic or Jewish but I'm banking on a big dose of maternal guilt to keep my children safe for the next ten years or so.

The 12 Childless Days of Summer and Beyond

2010-06-09T12:18:00.021-04:00

I know I made a huge deal last summer about all the things I was going to do while the boys were away at camp but I learned my lesson, sort of. The weather didn't cooperate so there wasn't much sipping drinks on the patio (too rainy), I never finished touching up all the nicks and dents in the trim (too lazy) and my Other Half and I didn't sleep naked (too cold) but this year ... this year it will be different.

First off they finish school on June 29th and go to camp on June 30th! Couldn't have planned it better if I tried. I know it will be a crazy whirlwind getting them packed (remember The List?) and ready to go but as soon as they step on the barge My Other Half and I are going on a road trip! We're heading down east to deliver two boats, one to Nova Scotia and the other to Newfoundland which is the only province I have never been to. Very excited, it will be a two day drive to North Sydney, N.S. then a six hour ferry ride to Port au Basques and then on to Cornerbrook. I can't wait, I love road trips. Already planning my playlists and downloading podcasts. I might even sign up for Sirius Satellite again, if only to see if Martha Stewart's crazy daughter Alexis still has her show, Whatever. Just checked, she does and she has a blog. We listened to the show a couple of years ago while driving home from Florida, it is raunchy and quite funny, not at all what Martha would call "a good thing."

But back to the 12 Childless Days of Summer and Beyond. I am going to make a list of what I want to do, as well as a few things I need to do and hope that the weather cooperates and My Other Half is ready, willing and able. (And I will also encourage the boys make their wish lists like Sarah at Clover Lane did and I will try to accommodate any requests as long as they don't involve public pools or water parks)

So here goes.

My Top Ten List of Things I Want to Do This Summer

Ride my horse more than once a week which will get him in shape so I don't have to worry that he is going to keel over on me after we gallop.
Try to make a slipcover for the chair in my bedroom which because of old age and a puppy looks awful but it is my pile chair and when I do eventually put everything away that I pile on it I would like it to look nice.
Finish touching up the trim or rather start over again since all the touch ups I did last summer have been scraped off. What I did get done looked so nice for a while.
Rearrange the furniture in the basement once we get the hand-me-down sectional sofa from a friend's mother. I want it to be less of a playroom since the boys don't really play as much any more. There will still be some toys left but I want the TV set up so they can sit and watch or play games without trashing the whole room. The old IKEA pullout couch has more than served it's purpose and has to go.
Update my blog header as soon as I figure out how to do a collage on my MacBook, I had it down pat with Picasa but now I am using Adobe Elements so if anyone out there knows how to do it, let me know.

But wait a minute.

This list is way more need than want so screw it. I am going to concentrate on the wants rather than the multitude of needs.

Go for a paddle down the river we live on but never take advantage of.
Get out on the sailboat we inherited and go for sunset cocktail cruises with friends.
Get out and play soccer which we signed up for but haven't been able to do since the kids' activities take priority.
Take My Other Half for a horseback ride so he can see how special the gift he gave me truly is.
Do something with some girlfriends - go to the spa, go for a bike ride and then the spa, go to the new winery nearby after the bike ride and the spa.
Throw a couple of dinner parties with an eclectic group of people. Eat outside with lots of candles, wine and good food.
Go to the beach for picnics, the beach which we live near but hardly ever go to.
Help my Other Half to breathe deeply, sleep well and enjoy this wonderful life he works so hard to give us.
Try the Raw Divas Seven Day Detox just to see if it makes me feel any better and to give myself a challenge. After that ... give myself another challenge.

And finally Number 10. Enjoy my time while the boys are at camp and enjoy my time with the boys for the rest of the summer.